Chapter 1: Introduction - School of English Studies

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Chapter 1: Introduction
The norms of correctness in terminology adopted by followers of Bloomfield or
Chomsky are especially influential and revealing. In this respect Whorf who as a fire
insurance inspector noted the consequences of calling a vapor-filled drum ‘empty’
offered a permanent lesson to linguistics itself … Terminology, then, and
representative anecdote, interact with the goals, practice, and commitment of
linguistics to shape what is done … In a later period historians may discover that what
was done and what was lastingly accomplished must be distinguished, and may
conclude that terminology and anecdote, fused in the idiom or rhetoric of the
approach, had more to do with what was done than with what was lastingly
accomplished. The temptation is then to dismiss rhetoric as merely decorative and
superficial. And superficial it is, to those who must discard it to find kernels they wish
to use. But since no approach appears to succeed without a rhetoric, it would seem
that it is not superficial, but a functional prerequisite.
Hymes and Fought, American Structuralism
Introduction
To begin to tell the story of how argumentation and rhetorical positioning have
played a central role in the history of linguistics in the past century with Ferdinand de
Saussure’s Cours de Linguistique Général is, of course, to engage in a move that seems
wholly opposed to what has been understood by many scholars to be one of that book’s
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central insights; while one of the most novel moves of the Cours was to authorize the
study of language and language practices without a search for origin (as had been the
primary goal of most 19th Century scholars of language), to begin this study with the
Cours seems to posit an origin for the story.1 (Indeed, I admit that beginning as such is
largely a technique of exposition.)
What’s more, the fact that the Cours has been such a captivating document to
language scholars of many different orientations despite the fact that it is essentially an
unauthored text (that is to say, it was compiled out of Saussure’s lecture notes edited and
published by two of his colleagues after the author’s death) would, at first, seem to leave
little room for the suggestion — the suggestion that this study intends to make — that
rhetorical packaging, argumentation, and timing have played an important role in the
history of modern ‘scientific’ linguistics. If, indeed, scholars have found the Cours a
useful text, despite the fact that it should properly be read as unauthored,2 that would
seem to present evidence in support of our common intuitions of how scholarly and
especially scientific findings are adjudicated by subsequent scholars; the notions
determined by later scholars to be ‘useful’ or ‘accurate’ are accepted and the rest
discarded, with the adjudication of the propositions taking place without regard to the
author’s style or packaging of the claims. That is to say, the Cours’ remarkable effect on
the study of language in the 20th century despite its unauthored nature might seem to
1
Furthermore, although the notion of language as a social fact has been taken by many scholars
to be one of the central innovations of the Cours, many scholars believe that this should be seen
as evidence for the influence of Durkeim’s notion of a fait social on Saussure (Matthews 2001:
12).
2
That is to say, there exists no single, unified author that is the originating source of the text (see,
for example, Foucault [1969 (1986)]).
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support our traditional notions about scientific discourse: that the persona of the author
plays no role in the reception of the scientific texts and that scientific texts as a whole are
totally unrhetorical.
It has been said that the Cours spawned a revolution in linguistic theory. This
revolution, we are told, lay in the fact in that it authorized the study of languages in their
static state, and not as part of a search for origins; it — to use the now familiar distinction
it proposed — authorized the study of languages as synchronic objects rather than as part
of diachronic inquiry. If, however, the Cours engendered a revolution in linguistic
thought — as is often suggested in the disciplinary lore of both mainstream ‘scientific’
linguistics and contemporary poststructuralist theory, it cannot be said to have led to
development of a system for describing human languages anywhere near as neat and
robust as the mechanical system produced in the Newtonian revolution. The Cours,
rather, proposed a series of what have proven to be captivating ideas and dichotomies —
notions that, like the synchronic/diachronic distinction, have been used and abused by
scholars of many different methodological commitments to undergird their lines of
inquiry.
In proposing that languages can be studied synchronically, the Cours suggested
that there exists unavoidable systematicity to human languages in their states at any one
time. Indeed, one of the most novel and captivating notions of the Cours may have been
that at the core of human languages there exists a structured system. The captivating
dichotomy that the Cours proposed to capture this notion is, of course, familiar; there
exists a system of langue (an abstract formal system) that can be studied apart from
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parole (language in use), with the primary goal of linguistics being the study of langue.
The Cours is, however, deeply ambiguous as to whether this structured system is
primarily psychological (= biological) or social in nature. Indeed, we see this tension
clearly in the Cours’ very definition of the synchronic / diachronic dichotomy; the Cours
suggests that synchronic linguistics “will be concerned with logical and psychological
connexions between coexisting items constituting a system, as perceived by the same
collective consciousness” (98). As we see in this quote, the Cours emphasizes that the
systematicity of languages lies both in the potentials of human biology (“psychological
connexions”) and the social groups in which the practices of language exist (the
“collective consciousness”).
Human languages are both sets of arbitrary social conventions and highly
systematic sets of practices, highly constrained by human biology. Human languages,
like all human cultural practices, exist in their current forms due to the interaction of the
human genetic endowment with the vicissitudes of history. While most scholars of
human language consider the idea that languages are both the products of human nature
and individual culture banally true, determining where to draw the line between culture
and biology has proven a remarkably tricky task. Indeed, whether to consider languages
as primarily social facts (i.e., mostly cultural conventions) or constrained by human
biology has led to a long, many-fronted battle among scholars espousing many different
methodological commitments — a battle that is not a stretch to suggest has been a battle
for the soul of the study of human languages. At the same time, this situation has
engendered a climate of disciplinary isolation in both camps: the two sides view the
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world so differently that they have difficulty in and little desire to communicate with one
another. While we certainly can say scholars of human language have developed sound,
basically scientific, knowledge about human languages in the areas of the study of
language most directly connected to human physiology (e.g., phonology: the study of the
system of sounds of human languages), developing a rigorous system to describe the
workings of human languages in areas of study where culture plays a more significant
role (e.g., semantics: the study of meaning; and syntax: the study of word order
formations) has, however, proven a much trickier task.
Linguists, like all scholars attempting to describe nature, attempt to describe the
most possible phenomena with the fewest possible sets of rules. In particular, linguists
have a special esteem for any set constraints, be they rules of grammar or rules of
phonology, that can seemingly bring some sort of order to the chaos of human language.
Accordingly, linguists, like other scholars interested in building scientific knowledge,
attempt to limit the available set of problems they are attempting to tackle at any one
moment.
While languages are clearly both cultural and biological, various schools of
thought have, over the past century, attempted to focus on one or the other for
methodological purposes; they have attempted to factor out either the biological or the
cultural aspect of language for the purposes of facilitating lines of inquiry. As I have
suggested, we can, broadly stated, propose the existence of two general orientations
toward the study of language in the past century: one that sees language as essentially a
social fact (what I shall call the language as a social fact and/or the language as culture
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school) and one that sees language as essentially a biological fact (what I shall call the
language as a biological fact and/or the language as biology3 school). However, just as
in many nature vs. nurture arguments, the various actors in the debate over to what
degree languages are innate have overcommitted themselves to certain foundational
propositions in order to legitimate their lines of research.
Language as a Social Fact
Inspired in varying degrees by the Cours, what has come to be called the
structuralist tradition (including anthropologists on both sides of the Atlantic and what
has come to be known as the American post-Bloomfieldian linguists) sought to develop
rigorous models to describe the potentials of human language and culture largely without
reference to human biology. Broadly stated, they attempted to develop frameworks to
describe the potentials of human culture and language (i.e., to describe the systematicity
of human languages and cultures) by reference to empirical evidence from human
languages and cultures. In the anthropological structuralist tradition, this factoring out of
biology can be understood largely as a response to racist and/or social Darwinist attitudes
about non-Western cultures; these anthropologists attempted to highlight the richly
systematic nature of non-Western cultures and languages. 4 That is to say, these scholars
adopted a strongly culturally relativist stance in order to counter the common claim that
marginalized groups are biologically inferior; these anthropologists construed nonWestern cultures as systematic in order to highlight that marginalized groups’ seeming
3
4
I have borrowed this phrasing from Joseph, Love, and Taylor (2001).
For more see George and George’s The Structuralists: From Marx to Lévi-Strauss.
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inability to perform within or adapt to Western cultures stems not from those groups
biological inferiority, but rather from the richly systematic constraints of their own
cultures.
Although the ideas of the anthropological structuralist tradition and
sociolinguistics have certainly had substantive effects on mainstream scientific
linguistics, they have not throughout the past century been at the core of what has been
deemed by the majority to constitute ‘scientific’ linguistics. To find a tradition of thought
that factored out biology that at one time ruled ‘scientific’ inquiry into human languages
is not, however, impossible. In the 1940s and 50s American linguistics was ruled by a
tradition of thought that factored out issues of psychology and mind (and by extension
biology) in the interests of making their models more scientific: namely, the postBloomfieldian tradition, a tradition also given the label American Structuralism. Inspired
by the governing mood of logical positivism and behaviorism, the post-Bloomfieldians
believed they could develop formal and abstract descriptions of human languages without
appeal to concepts like structures in the mind or mental states — notions that were
deemed highly speculative in that era.5
5
It should be noted, however, that the post-Bloomfieldians were, indeed, interested in developing
rigorous models — models that might eventually describe the potentials of human nature — but
deemphasized notions of biology and psychology in the interests of making their models more
scientific. However, many of these scholars did not unreflectively assume that they were
uncovering rigorous models to describe human nature. The mood was optimistic but careful:
“let’s mine the depths using these models, test them off broad empirical evidence of language in
use in many cultures, and see what happens.” That is to say, while the post-Bloomfieldians did
believe their models to be the best models possible for linguistic inquiry, they were not willing to
defend their models with the claim that they were uncovering structures in the mind.
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These post-Bloomfieldian linguists were, furthermore, highly skeptical of
searches for biological universals of language, as they associated such tendencies with
the cultural chauvinism of missionary grammars of American Indian languages that
assumed that all languages could be translated easily and freely into Latin. That is to say,
the post-Bloomfieldian linguists adopted methodological and cultural relativism as a
reaction against the linguocentrism of the colonial era.
But the dominant tradition today that construes language as a social fact is a
tradition that makes few moves toward construing their line of inquiry as scientific. This
tradition, variously labeled as the postmodernist, poststructuralist, or social constructivist
tradition, it is not a stretch to say, has swept up many areas of the humanities and social
science in the past few decades. Broadly stated, the poststructuralist tradition differs from
the structuralist tradition in its emphasis that cultural systems are not tied to human
nature; while still emphasizing the systematicity of cultures, postmodernists run with the
assumption that systems of cultural practice are themselves autonomous (i.e., that they
exist outside of a limiting biology), constructed, and arbitrary. This work, often very
political in focus, frequently attempts to explain the practices of language and culture at
certain time and place by reference to dominant social formations, with the extant forms
of culture being the product of the dominant social formations. That is to say, extant
cultural practices (be they something as lofty as what has been canonized as ‘literature’ or
as lowly as menus) can be read as evidence for a dominant social formation. By
understanding culture itself as autonomous, postmodernist assumptions authorize the
study of language without reference to underlying biology, and, furthermore, undergird
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the study of language practices without ‘scientific’ methodological restrictions (e.g.,
setting up empirical experiments).6 That is to say, by construing language as an
autonomous social practice, postmodernists can engage in inquiry merely by reading,
interpreting, and accounting for the social formation undergirding language practices.
Various postmodern masters have been enamored with one or more of the Cours’
captivating dichotomies (see, for example, the work of Derrida and Lacan). The
dichotomy proposed by the Cours that postmodernist philosophers have found the most
captivating is, of course, the Cours’ theory of the sign: that the relationship between the
signifier (the sound image) and the signified (the concept) is totally arbitrary. Indeed,
Saussure’s theory of the arbitrary nature of the sign has been one of the most influential
and productive notions in postmodern philosophy. In particular, postmodern philosophers
have been enamored with the proposition, seemingly encoded in the Cours’ theory of the
sign, that culture itself is always already an arbitrary social construction, and that any
attempts to uncover the ultimate ‘meaning’ or ‘reference’ of language and cultural
patterns will ultimately lead to failure. Indeed, the postmodern philosophers that have
expounded on the Cours’ theory of the sign have often taken on an unnecessarily
skeptical stance, seemingly enjoying the fact that their propositions, if taken seriously,
would seem to preclude the development of rich, scientific descriptions of the human
language and culture. What’s more, the playful exuberance of much of this work
6
This is not, however, to suggest that postmodern theorists deny an underlying biology. Rather,
as that we can have no privileged access as to what that underlying nature might be; all
representations of nature are, ultimately, representations of nature.
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(especially by figures such as Derrida and Lacan) routinely pushes the boundaries of
what can and should be accepted as scholarship.
The language as a social fact school is, however, a much more diverse school
than I have just let on; most of its members are not as radical as these postmodern
philosophers. Indeed, within the camp of language as a social fact can be found all the
following groups: sociolinguists ( a group emphasizing the social systematicity of
languages, tying specific practices of language to social variables [e.g., class, race,
gender, and geography], countering broad assumption in the language as biology school
of linguistics, namely the homogeneity of linguistics communities); discourse analysts (a
broadly defined group of scholars that study language as it is actually used in real social
situations); and rhetoricians (a group similarly interested in analyzing language in use,
but often using a different interpretive vocabulary [namely, that of the rhetorical
tradition], with many theorists placing emphasis on the agency of the individual).
Language as a Biological Fact
While the tradition of thought construing language as a social fact has, indeed,
had significant effects upon inquiry into the study of language in the past century, it has
not dominated ‘scientific’ inquiry into the study of human languages in most North
American linguistics departments in the past four decades. Instead, North American
linguistics has been dominated in much of the past half century by traditions of thought
that emphasizes that language is, ultimately, a biological fact. By the notion of language
as a biological fact I mean the following: extending the search for rich principles that are
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ultimately the product of human biology (as have been found in the area of phonology) to
include areas of language study that would at first appear to be largely cultural
conventions (e.g., syntax and semantics). Indeed, the language as biology tradition
believes that languages are too systematic to merely be the residue of the vicissitudes of
history as seems to be the assumption of postmodernists. Rather, language as biology
suggests that the systematicity of languages must ultimately be a product of constraints
upon human languages that are themselves a product of the human genetic endowment.7
The most prominent theorist of this line of thought: Noam Chomsky and the various
programs of generative grammar that he has promoted.
However, these scholars of language that have claimed access to biology have
claimed access to biology not by discovering actual genes or structures in the mind.
Rather they have laid claim to language as biology through the gateway of mentalism:
the claim that the analyses presented stand in for structures in the mind. The rhetorical
allure of appeals to language as biology is clear, and such appeals have been a part of
generative grammar since near its beginnings. Indeed, Lenneberg’s famous 1967 edited
volume Biological Foundations of Language both gives prominent place to Chomsky’s
work and promotes his person as a point of identity for the biological study of language.
(This was at the same time that Chomsky was boldly proclaiming linguistics to be “a
branch of cognitive psychology” [Language and Mind 130].) Despite the fact that after
7
Within in the language as biology tradition exist several contemporary and historically
important schools of linguistic thought, including: some versions of what today is termed
cognitive grammar and, of course, cognitive grammar’s more influential conceptual ancestor
generative grammar — a tradition of thought that has played a very influential, even dominant,
role in American linguistics in the past half century.
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decades of work, generative grammar appears no closer than at its origin to bridging the
gap between their descriptions of language and the genuine findings of psychologists and
biologists, Chomsky has, in fact, ramped up his appeals to language as biology in recent
work. For example, in his most recent publications, much of Chomsky’s emphasis is on
the newly-promoted notion of biolinguistics (see, for example, Chomsky [2006]).
Just as postmodern philosophers have seemingly taken an unnecessarily
pessimistic stance toward our abilities to develop rigorous models to describe the
potentials of human culture, the language as biology school, particularly scholars
working in the field of generative grammar (the tradition of thought that this study is
primarily about), have adopted a rhetorical position that seems to overstate what truly can
be said to have been discovered by their research program. Despite the fact that their
findings have always been, and remain, highly theoretical, generative grammarians have
retained largely an uncompromisingly realist rhetoric. That is to say, despite the fact that
their findings are highly theoretical, the generative grammarians maintain the
commitment that what they are describing are, in fact, properties in the mind encoded by
human biology.8
Interestingly, however, the language as biology tradition of thought, in much of
its disciplinary lore, also traces its origin back to the Cours — the very same document
8
One should notice that both the language as biology and the language as a social fact schools
have made rhetorical commitments to extreme positions — rhetorical commitments that
undoubtedly have affected the institutional prestige of these various schools of thought. By
suggesting that they are uncovering principles in the mind the language as biology school have
been able to frame their work as the only properly scientific way to study human languages, and
have therefore received the attendant disciplinary prestige warranted a scientific mode of inquiry.
Conversely, it is not a stretch to suggest that the willing adoption of postmodern ideas by the
contemporary humanities has only served to further its marginalization in the academy: “well if
they don’t care about doing proper inquiry, then we shouldn’t care about them.”
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that postmodern philosophers have worked from in developing systems of thought that
would seem to preclude the attempt to develop rigorous scientific descriptions of human
languages and cultures. Indeed, while the Cours ‘gave birth’ to modern scientific
linguistics, it also engendered a school of thought that would seem to preclude the
scientific study of language. (For more on the reception of the Cours in both traditions,
see Roy Harris’ Saussure and his Interpreters.)9
Of course, those in the language as biology school trace a different genealogy for
their methods; they secure the Cours’ position as a foundational document in ‘scientific’
linguistics by emphasizing its immediate effects on the development of biologicallyfocused theories of phonology in the early 20th century. The story goes something like
this: early in the 20th century, the Cours inspired the phonological theories of the Prague
school linguists, a group whose work was central in developing the scientific ambitions
and biological orientation of much mainstream 20th century linguistics.10 These ideas
were imported to America largely through the person of Roman Jakobson11 — a scholar
who had fled Europe, settling in America in 1941 (Simpson 247) and who, through his
While the language as biology school accept the Cours’ theory of the sign as uncontroversially
true for its domain of original application (concepts and their corresponding sound images), the
Cours’ theory of the sign has not, however, been widely productive in the language as biology
school (see, for example, Seuren’s Western Linguistics: An Historical Introduction). That is to
say, if languages are totally arbitrary sets of social practices in no way motivated by the human
innate genetic endowment, then linguists’ descriptions, at least according to mainstream
‘scientific’ linguists, suddenly become non- or even anti-scientific.
10
See, for example, Sampson (1980).
11
Of course, Jakobson’s writings have had effects on several fields, including the structuralist
tradition in anthropology and in literary criticism.
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positions at Harvard and MIT, promoted the search for biological universals as the
ultimate goal of linguistic scholarship.12
But the major force for securing the place of the Cours’ formulations in linguistic
theory has been, once again, Noam Chomsky — a scholar who, no doubt, received some
of his own chutzpah to view language as biology from Jakobson and his students.
Chomsky’s rhetorical masterstroke has been to reformulate a central dichotomy of the
Cours, a maneuver that has served to undergird the program of generative grammar. In
place of the dichotomy between langue and parole, Chomsky has proposed a distinction
between competence and performance. Accordingly, Chomsky has marshaled the weight
of tradition, and the authority of Saussure’s person in order to promote his own program
as the most scientific way to study human language.
While, as I have suggested, the notion of langue presented by the Cours is deeply
ambiguous as to whether the systematicity of languages is either biological or cultural in
nature, competence moves the formal system decidedly into the biological camp; unlike
the system described by langue, competence cannot be construed as an abstract
disembodied social system. Rather, competence describes the manifestation of that
system in an individual’s ability to distinguish between well-formed and poorly-formed
sentences — an ability that is construed ultimately as a product of the human genetic
endowment. By factoring out performance (namely real evidence of how language is
actually used day-to-day situations) and construing ‘scientific’ inquiry into human
languages as something that lays bare the features of competence, generative
What’s more, Jakobson served at Harvard as the mentor of Morris Halle, an important player in
development of generative grammar (see, for example, Harris [1994b]).
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grammarians have been able to position their work as laying bare the features of the mind
while producing formal models that are even more abstract than the disembodied formal
systems posited by some scholars in the language as culture tradition. That is to say, by
adopting a mentalist rhetoric generative grammarians have been able to position their
school of thought as more scientific than scholars proposing purely disembodied systems
even though the amount to which the models proposed in the various schools stand up to
broad empirical testing may be comparable.13
Master Texts, the Author Function, and Disciplinary Identity
Not everything in master texts needs to be accepted as true by later scholars for
the tradition of thought spawned by it to see the text as a master text. Certainly Darwin’s
Origin includes “speculative knowledge” (Gross 5) that is not considered science by
contemporary biologists. Rather, for a text to be promoted as a master text by later
scholars in the field it must promote propositions that come be seen as foundational to the
discipline; it must promote ideas that come to be part of the central disciplinary identity
13
The important point to take away here is this: that even in areas of study of human languages
that have taken the institutional role of ‘scientific’ linguistics, the assumptions undergirding
methods have played a central role in those lines of inquiry. While assumptions play an
important role in all lines of inquiry, even scientific ones, in many strands of linguistics,
assumptions in and of themselves can be said to constitute the lines of inquiry in a substantive
way. The ultimate reason for primacy of assumptions in linguistics, even in ‘scientific’
linguistics, lies in the fact that the models used by these linguists are themselves formal and
abstract. Indeed, as many logicians and philosophers have noted, formal, axiomatic systems are
always already underdetermined by empirical evidence. However, many scholars in the language
as biology school would make the claim that the problematic assumptions that they make are
necessary assumptions if we are to prevent inquiry into human languages from dissolving into
mysteries. This is cannot be the case. While making bold assumptions may facilitate the lines of
inquiry (as it has for both postmodernists and generative grammarians), formalism and theorybuilding should never take precedence over broad empirical adequacy if what one is genuinely
interested in is real scientific inquiry.
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of the field. That is to say, for a text to have broad and deep influence — and for its
author to be canonized as a master — its effects on disciplinary identity (i.e., its effects
on how the discipline understands itself and its unique contributions to human
knowledge) are seemingly more important than its actual effects upon the real methods of
scholars.
Deference to the ideas of the masters is, indeed, a common feature of both
‘scientific’ linguistics and contemporary poststructuralist readings of culture. That is to
say, even though the Cours should not be read as an authored text, the person of
Saussure, the idea of Saussure as author, has undergirded scholarship in both scientific
linguistics and poststructuralist theory; the Cours, although unauthored, is (to
demonstrate deference to my favorite postmodern master, a scholar whose body of work
was, ironically, devoted largely to doing away with the cult of the individual) imbued
with what Foucault has called an author function (1969 [1986]); the idea of Saussure as
author/agent serves to legitimate inquiry. This deference to author/agents is, however, I
hope to show, a common theme in contemporary ‘scientific’ linguistics. In doing as such,
furthermore, I hope to put to rest the concerns expressed in the first two paragraphs of
this study.
As the example of the Cours shows us, simple yet alluring dichotomies can serve
as the lynchpins of disciplinary identity of intellectual communities. What’s more, the
same text can serve as lynchpin of multiple intellectual communities if its propositions
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are alluring and vague enough.14 The setup of the Cours’ dichotomies — i.e., the
rhetoric of the Cours’ salient formulations — have clearly inspired later work, some of it
understood by its practitioners and by others as scientific. Indeed, the Cour is a clear
case in which ‘scientific’ theorizing has been produced and constrained by specific
rhetorical formulations. The constraining effects of rhetoric upon strands of inquiry
understood as scientific has, I hope to show, been common in the history of contemporary
North American linguistics.
Noam Chomsky: A Living Author
This is a study, primarily, about the rhetorical strategies of the founding father of
generative grammar and one of the central figures in the language as biology tradition,
Noam Chomsky, that other giant of linguistics of the 20th century. Over the course of his
academic career — a career that now stretches more than half a century, Chomksy has, a
la Saussure, proposed several ideas and dichotomies that have proven captivating to
‘scientific’ linguists, ideas that have undergirded much later inquiry. However, he, unlike
Saussure, has participated actively in debates regarding how to develop proper scientific
lines of inquiry for linguistics; he has argued consistently and vigorously in support of his
beliefs, attempting to demarcate15 generative grammar as the most properly scientific
approach for studying human languages. What’s more, Chomksy has articulated clear
14
As I have shown, the Cours did not inscribe boundaries for scientific inquiry into human
languages. Rather, its captivating dichotomies opened up a remarkably wide field of play for
inquiry into human language.
15
I have borrowed the notion of ‘rhetorical demarcation’ from Charles Alan Taylor’s Defining
Science: A Rhetoric of Demarcation.
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and distinct boundaries between what he believes should be considered proper scientific
linguistics and what should not. In engaging in these moves, Chomsky has, it is not a
stretch to suggest, lorded over the field of generative grammar; the models of generative
grammarians have used at various points in the history of generative grammar have been,
to varying to degrees, those which Chomsky himself has authorized.
It has not, in fact, always been case that scholarship in the field of generative
grammar has been held together by assumptions authorized by Chomsky. In the years
following the publication of his seminal 1965 book Aspects of the Theory of Syntax
Chomsky engaged in a vitriolic debate with a movement, generative semantics, that for a
while looked as if it would take control of the institutional reins of the study of generative
syntax. Broadly stated, generative semanticists took one of the captivating dichotomies
proposed by Aspects, namely the distinction between surface structure (related to sound)
and deep structure (related to meaning), and ran with it. The mood of the time, supported
by Chomsky’s work with Halle in their now infamous tome that inspired the field of
generative phonology, The Sound Pattern of English (1966), was that any all surface
features of language can be decomposed into a small set of universal primitives and that
inquiry into languages should posit the existence abstract, formal, elaborate (and,
oftentimes, highly dubious) transformations from these deep structures to surface
structures. Following in this mood, generative semanticists pushed the notion of deep
structure articulated by Chomksy as far as they could.
Some generative semanticists claimed, for example, that sentences that mean the
same thing, but use different phrasing to express that same thing should, ultimately, have
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the same underlying representation. What’s more, many generative semanticists openly
embraced the notion of abstract syntax: the notion that these underlying primitives can be
unified with formal logic.16 That is to say, these generative semanticists seemed to take
their system outside the realm of language as biology, and into the realm of abstract
ideas. (Nonetheless, many generative semanticists still based their central theoretical
notions such as derivational and transderivational constraints on appeals to an
underlying limiting biology.)
Chomsky, however, was never convinced by the generative semanticists,
maintaining the claim that semantics in the realm of syntax should be interpretive rather
than generative — meaning that the number of possible deep structure formations should
be limited and there should not be an unconstrained search for a unified deep layer of
meaning. Indeed, Chomsky quickly attempted to put the brakes on the unconstrained
search for deep structures (see, for example, Chomsky’s defining work of this period
“Remarks on Nominalization” [1970] where he suggests that nominalized verbs [e.g.,
‘destruction’] should not be decomposed into their ‘original’ verbs [e.g., ‘destruct’]). In
engaging in these moves — namely reformulating and articulating boundaries for the
deep structure / surface structure distinction (a distinction that he has tinkered with
several times over the history of generative grammar), Chomksy has, wittingly or
unwittingly, circumscribed boundaries for generative research more or less associated
with his own person.
16
See, for example, McCawley (1970) and Lakoff (1970), (1972).
Oenbring / 20
Generative Grammar: A Captivating Idea
Early in the 20th century, North American scholars of language, working largely
in the anthropological tradition, encountered the incredible diversity and complexity of
Native American languages. These languages seemed totally unresponsive to description
using the traditional grammatical categories that Western scholars of language have used
since antiquity. In this climate, Benjamin Whorf proposed his linguistic relativity
hypothesis: namely, the claim that the available grammatical categories of a language
inscribe a worldview.17 Confronting the realization that languages are remarkably
different led the post-Bloomfieldian linguist Martin Joos to proclaim his now famous
assertion — an assertion much maligned by Chomskyans18 — that “languages could
differ from each other without limit and in unpredictable ways” (Joos 96). Although the
post-Bloomfieldian mainstream, which Whorf was not a part of, did, in fact, believe their
methods to be the most properly scientific approach the study of human languages, the
specters of relativism and skepticism were, indeed, on the horizon.
In opposition to this climate, generative grammar proposed methods that appeared
to offer hope that linguists could develop rigorous scientific descriptions of syntax and
semantics. Rather than being overwhelmed by the possibilities of human languages,
Chomsky instead saw clear and distinct mathematically-elegant patterns at the core of
human languages; he treated the human mind as something that operates like a computer,
working through formal subroutines (this concept is most clear in The Logical Structure
While in the popular understanding of Whorf’s ideas the focus largely is on lexical items (e.g.,
Eskimo words for snow), Whorf’s work with the linguistic relativity hypothesis is largely focused
on grammatical categories and patterns (see, for example, Language, Thought and Reality).
18
See, for example, Newmeyer (2005: ix).
17
Oenbring / 21
of Linguistic Theory). Indeed, much of the appeal of generative grammar — something
that has existed in the model since its beginnings — is the notion that there exists a
formal, structural, and mathematically-elegant unity to syntactic constructions. Since the
1960s Chomsky has worked to legitimate the program of generative grammar by the
suggesting that his methods can work to lay bare syntactic constructions that are innate to
the human mind; Chomsky has reinforced his claims that generative grammar reveals
robust patterns that govern human languages by including a mentalist rhetoric.
Languages are, therefore, to generative grammarians, not just social constructions or the
residue of language change, but are rather objects constrained by the potentials of our
innate human nature.
In order to find deep formal unities in human language that are ultimately the
product of the human mind Chomsky has worked from some problematic methodological
assumptions. First of all, as aforementioned, generative grammar makes the explicit
assumption that proper inquiry into human languages should lay bare the features of
competence rather than considering evidence from performance (see, for example, 1965’s
Aspects of the Theory of Syntax).19 That is to say, Chomsky claims that the goal of
linguistic inquiry should be to develop theories about the syntactic structures of human
language based on native speakers’ intuitions of well-formedness (basically the
grammaticality) of certain constructions rather than language as it is actually used in real
social situations. Secondly, generative grammar as a whole proceeds from deduction
rather than induction. Deductive inquiry proceeds by the assumption of the well19
This distinction has, more recently, been recast as e-language and i-language (see, for example,
Chomsky’s Knowledge of Language).
Oenbring / 22
formedness of first principles, applying the general principle to specific cases
encountered further on in inquiry; it is top-down. Conversely, inductive inquiry, a mode
of inquiry generally thought to be more scientific, looks for broad evidence and attempts
to build rules from that broad evidence; it is bottom-up. This willingness to work by
deduction is something that has existed in the generative tradition since its beginning.
Indeed, in his first important work, 1957’s Syntactic Structures, Chomsky made bold
statements for the research program of generative grammar based on evidence as meager
as the phenomenon of affix hopping in English. Thirdly, and related, generative
grammarians have willingly made bold proclamations about the potentials of all human
languages based on evidence largely from Western languages, with English being by far
the most common source of evidence.
Following Chomsky’s lead, generative grammarians argue that our ability to
distinguish between novel well-formed sentences and poorly-formed sentences indicates
that there must exist principles of well-formedness for syntactic constructions that are
innate in the human mind. We must, according to Chomsky, recognize that there exist
principles of well-formedness because languages are essentially creative; we can
recognize the grammatically or ungrammatically of sentences or constructions that we
have never heard before.
In order to access and develop theories about these principles of well-formedness
one of the common methods used by generative grammarians is to compare native
speakers’ (usually in practice this means the linguist themselves) intuitions of wellformedness of similar — and oftentimes rare and unusual — syntactic constructions. The
Oenbring / 23
following example from Chomsky’s 1981 book Lectures on Government and Binding
demonstrates these methods nicely. Chomsky, for example, suggests that there is a clear
difference between the well-formedness of the following sentences, claiming that the first
sentence is well-formed and the last sentence is poorly-formed (indicated by the asterisk):
(20)
(i) they thought that I said that feeding each other would be difficult
(ii) * they seemed that I said that feeding each other would be difficult20
(Chomsky 78)
What is interesting about Chomsky’s treatment of these sentences is not that he
recognizes a difference between the well-formedness of these two sentences. Indeed, my
intuitions of well-formedness suggest that the latter is poorly formed. Rather, what is
interesting is that Chomsky construes the poorly-formed nature of the second sentence as
something more than the fact that it just doesn’t make sense or as something more than a
banal cultural pattern. Instead, Chomsky uses this distinction as evidence for theoretical
constructs (in this case, the patterning of antecedent control for PRO and trace) that he
intimates exist in all human languages.21
The above example nicely illustrates a concept that, for many generative
grammarians, has come to be the sine qua non of their field: the autonomy of syntax.
20
I have simplified the visual representation of this sentence for the purpose of reducing my
explanatory burden at this point.
21
What’s more, it is interesting that generative grammarians rely upon such odd examples for
purposes of making distinctions. Generative grammarians claim that these unique and
syntactically intricate examples are an asset; as we are unlikely to have heard such intricate
examples or hear them rarely, and still have intuitions well-formedness vs. poor-formedness
indicates that these distinctions cannot have been learned through explicit teaching or our
enculturation. Conversely, critics of generative grammar suggest that these odd examples are
chosen selectively because they appear to be the best examples for supporting the theoretical
constructs being supported: they claim that generativists cherry pick their examples.
Oenbring / 24
Broadly stated, autonomous syntax means this: that patterns of word-ordering are not just
patterns of cultural habit, nor are they constrained by pragmatic features (the social codes
of language), nor by discourse features (i.e., the patterning of information in speech or
texts above the sentence level) or constraints imposed by the mind’s conceptual
processing of sentences. Rather, generative grammarians suggest that there exist formal,
logical, rules that govern well-formedness of all syntactic constructions (in practice this
usually means individual sentences) that are themselves autonomous, constrained by
none of these external features.
It is, for example, tempting to suggest that the differences between the wellformedness of the two sentences above lies in the differences in patterns of usage or in
the meanings of the words thought and seemed (i.e., that ‘they seemed that I said’ just
isn’t something we commonly say or just doesn’t make a lot of sense when describing the
held beliefs of groups in response to reported speech). This suggestion, the suggestion
that it is something about the meaning of the verb to seem itself and our patterns usage of
the verb to seem that prevents us accepting the well-formedness of the whole syntactic
construction they seemed that I said would, in fact, be the position taken by many
scholars in a prominent current school of thought in the study of syntax: construction
grammar. Generative grammar, however, does not foreground the meaning and usage
patterns of individual lexical items. Rather, the dogma of autonomous syntax states that
the well-formedness of sentences can and should be gauged by description using formal
rules that apply to elements in hierarchical syntactic trees across the boundaries of
clauses (so in this case the sentence as a whole).
Oenbring / 25
Indeed, in Chomsky’s description, the problem with the second sentence (They
seemed that I said that feeding each other would be difficult) is that the theoretical
construct of trace, something that he suggests exists in this sentence in the slot just before
the present participle ‘feeding’ in the third clause of the sentence, cannot be governed
remotely by its antecedent ‘they’ (which has moved from current spot of the trace,
leaving the trace, to the beginning of the sentence in search of case). That is to say,
Chomsky construes the problem with the second sentence by reference to issues with the
government of trace, with trace being an item that exists outside of the questionable bit
of syntax itself (they seemed that I said). Chomsky’s explanation demonstrates clearly
the assumptions of the doctrine of autonomous syntax; the explanations given are theoryinternal and focus on the constraints imposed by constructs supposed to exist across
hierarchical syntactic trees rather than stemming from issues of usage or meaning.
Science Studies and the Rhetoric of Science
Inspired in varying degrees by cultural theorists inspired in varying degrees by the
Cours (e.g., Foucault), the broad science studies movement, including scholars from
across the humanities and social sciences, has in recent decades sought to develop rich
descriptions of scientific knowledge as a social fact; science studies scholars have sought
to investigate how the cultural practices of science, including its practices of language,
constrain and produce its practices and regimes of knowledge. Under the broad science
studies tent are a number of groups of scholars, including: philosophers of science, a
faction, broadly stated, who seek to articulate clear criteria for distinguishing ‘science’
Oenbring / 26
from ‘non-science’; sociologists of science, a group that, not surprisingly, investigates the
macro- and micro-sociological elements of scientific knowledge; discourse analysts,
scholars that study how language is used in particular situations; and rhetoricians of
science, scholars who study how scientists or would-be scientists use language in the
achievement of particular ends. This study is, as I have noted, ultimately, an addition to
the tradition of rhetoric of science.22
Broadly stated, rhetoricians of science differ from these other groups under the
science studies tent in their focus on how individuals achieve ends using language.
Rhetoricians of science differ from these other ‘pure postmodernists’ — those that wish
to dissolve all notions of individuality into dominant social systems and legitimated
cultural practices — in their interest in accounting for the ability of speakers to use
language strategically in order to achieve particular ends; rhetoricians highlight the
agency of speakers.23
Interestingly enough, the seeming obsession that rhetoricians of science have with
reading from the perspective of agency has been the crux of the most thorough and
prominent critique of the movement, specifically, Gaonkar’s famous essay “The Idea of
22
Like many texts promoting the notion of rhetoric of science, this study includes in its
introductory chapter an explanation for this somewhat offensive combination of terms. Indeed, I
would like to state now that I do not advocate the strongly relativist position espoused by the
more radical wing of science studies; I do not avow the position (a position taken by only a small
minority of the field of science studies) that scientific knowledge is itself an illusion (or a
collective delusion). Rather, this text is a case study of the argumentation and rhetorical
positioning of a particular dominant school of thought within the field of linguistics – a school of
thought, that despite the highly theoretical nature of its findings has, nevertheless, been able to
position itself as the most properly scientific way to study human languages throughout much of
the past half century.
23
Unfortunately, not all studies that have worked under the heading of rhetoric of science have
included this emphasis on agency; my schema is not perfect, but I believe it is valuable. Those
that do not highlight agency I would place under the title discourse studies of science.
Oenbring / 27
Rhetoric in the Rhetoric of Science.” In the piece, Gaonkar charges rhetoricians of
science, and rhetorical critics as a whole with appropriating the concepts of a tradition of
thought aimed at the production of persuasive speech for the purposes of interpreting
texts. That is to say, the very notion of rhetoric is deeply entwined with an ideology of
language production focused on the agency of the speaker. What’s more, Gaonkar argues
that a rhetorical reading of scientific texts inevitably moves toward the seductive trap of
romantic hermeneutics: a reading of history focused to an inappropriate degree on the
agency of individuals.
While one might view rhetorical criticism’s emphasis on agency as a point of
concern or an unavoidable methodological assumption that we can quietly sweep under
the rug, I would like to argue that rhetoricians of science should openly embrace our
concern with, our love of, agency. Indeed, a largely unrecognized theme in much
rhetoric of science scholarship up to now has been the focus on ‘revolutionary’ scientists:
scholars that have unquestionably changed their disciplines in profound ways. Certainly
there have been scientists who have been able to transcend the ideological matrix of their
disciplines and promote unique and valuable theorizing that has had legitimate effects
upon the state of knowledge in their field. Such scholars, labeled variously as instigators
of “scientific revolutions” (Kuhn) or “initiators of discursive practices” (Foucault [1969
(1986)]) can have the effect of reorganizing the entire methodological systems of their
disciplines.
As I have suggested, mainstream philosophy of science has traditionally
attempted to articulate universalized criteria for the demarcation of science from non-
Oenbring / 28
science; it has attempted to articulate demarcation criteria that exist for all science all the
time. That is to say, mainstream philosophy of science has not paid sufficient attention to
how scientists adjudicate and promote theories in the real contexts of knowledge making.
Ethnographic accounts of laboratory work such as those produced by sociologists of
science, have attempted to address many of these issues, but have largely focused on the
contexts where the banal work of what Kuhn calls ‘normal science’ rules. These
ethnographic studies, although intriguing, have offered little to further our knowledge of
how genuinely revolutionary scientists have been able to reconstitute the knowledgeapparatus of their field. Here, I argue, is where rhetoric of science has something to
offer the broader field of science studies.
Indeed, there has been a distinct tendency in much scholarship in rhetoric of
science to focus on the textual formations of scientists that have had truly profound
impacts on the disciplinary imagination of both their fields and science as a whole:
Campbell (1986) focuses on Darwin; Fahnestock (1999) touches on Darwin as well;
Gross (1990) analyzes the work of Copernicus and Newton among others; Ceccarelli
(2001) centers much of her book around the textual formations of Dobzhansky, a central
figure in the modern synthesis in biology; and, finally, Bazerman (1988) spends time
directly analyzing Watson and Crick’s famous piece in Nature wherein they staked their
claim to ownership of the double helix model for DNA. This focus on ‘revolutionary’
scientist/rhetors by many scholars in rhetoric of science suggests that the rhetorical
textual formulations that lead to radical reformulations of disciplinary knowledge are
indeed a particularly valuable site of research for rhetorical critics.
Oenbring / 29
Like or dislike his claims and methods, Chomsky should be viewed as one of
these transcendent figures. Or at least, transcendent figure is the role he has played (and
played well) within the discipline of linguistics; like it or not, we must admit that
Chomsky’s near- stranglehold on the disciplinary identity of linguistics in the U.S. is a
legitimate social fact. Indeed, even linguists whose projects display no deference to
Chomsky’s work often define their projects against Chomsky. What’s more, Chomsky’s
ability to play this role as a central element of the disciplinary identity of linguistics has,
for certain, been at least in part a product of his own rhetorical agency.
Rhetoric of Science and Rhetorical Criticism
It may be true that using the terminology of rhetoric to describe the argumentative
dynamics of a public or academic debate may never be able to get beyond a description
hyper-focused on the individual agency of the speaker. If, however, there has ever been
an academic field afforded high scientific prestige in many areas of the academy where
romantic hermeneutics offers an appropriate reading of that field’s history, then
generative grammar is that field. It is, indeed, difficult to overstate Chomsky’s influence,
both in terms of the day-to-day methods of generative grammarians over the past half
century and as a founding father in the disciplinary lore of generative grammar.
As Chomsky’s works have had such huge effects upon the field of generative
grammar, this suggests that rhetorical analysis of his major texts — and how those texts
worked to frame and promote generative grammar at their particular moments of
publication — allows access to substantive methodological issues behind the project of
Oenbring / 30
generative grammar. Accordingly, I focus my rhetorical analysis in this study on
Chomsky’s major publications. While I do look at the arguments forwarded by other
central generative grammarians and do look into the reception of certain work, in this
study the texts that I analyze are, largely, Chomsky’s most famous texts. While I
recognize that this focus may make my analysis appear as a run through the greatest hits,
I would like to make it clear that I have chosen this focus for more nuanced reasons than
the fact that they are famous. I have chosen the texts that I have because of their
substantive effects upon the methodological apparatus and discipline of generative
grammar. Indeed, as the goal of this study is, in part, to understand the disciplinary
functioning of generative grammar, a focus on the canonical texts of that that disciplinary
matrix is understandable.
Many rhetorical critics, including rhetoricians of science, often feel the need to
frame the concepts presented in the text as renewing the traditions of the ancient Greek
and Roman classical rhetoricians (this tendency is especially prominent in works like
Alan Gross’ The Rhetoric of Science, Prelli’s A Rhetoric of Science, and Fahnestock’s
Rhetorical Figures in Science). While I routinely invoke notions from the classical
rhetorical tradition like ethos, in this study I largely avoid displays of deference to the
classical rhetorical tradition. Instead, I envision this study as part of a newer tradition of
scholarship that accepts that rhetoric of science as having achieved enough autonomy as a
field in order to stand alone, without the authority of the classical tradition to support it.
For example, one of the major theoretical innovations of Ceccarelli’s Shaping Science
with Rhetoric is the notion of a conceptual chiasmus: the idea that rhetors successful in
Oenbring / 31
bridging disciplinary divides are those who are able to cause distinct intellectual
communities to see the world through each others’ eyes. Although the term conceptual
chiasmus includes a nod of deference to the classical rhetorical figure chiasmus, the
notion of conceptual chiasmus, like much of the rest of Ceccarelli’s book, while clearly
rhetorical in spirit, is not directly beholden to the classical rhetorical tradition in any
substantive way.
As I have already intimated, two of the defining notions of this study are the
concepts of disciplinary identity, and its corresponding idea of identity work. The notion
of identity work is, I would argue, the flipside of the notion of boundary work, a concept
promoted by sociologists of science such as Gieryn (1999) and rhetoricians of science
such as Charles Alan Taylor (1996). While boundary work generally describes how
established hard sciences such as biology and physics patrol their boundaries in order to
exclude non-sciences such as non-Western medicine and cold fusion from the canons of
scientific knowledge, identity work, I argue, describes how softer or more theoretical
disciplines or strands of inquiry frame their projects as the most properly scientific way to
study a certain object. While the notion of disciplinary identity is by no means a
neologism, and has seen some attention among rhetorical critics (see, for example,
Mailloux’s 2006 book Disciplinary Identities: Rhetorical Paths of English, Speech, and
Composition), the notion of disciplinary identity has not been a primary concern of work
in the rhetoric of science tradition until now. Indeed, the notion of identity work should
apply equally well to rhetors within softer sciences such as linguistics as it should to
highly theoretical elements of harder sciences like the branch of physics known as string
Oenbring / 32
theory. Increasing focus on how certain scholars rhetorically manage disciplinary identity
will, I hope, be this study’s most important addition the rhetoric of science tradition and
rhetorical criticism as a whole.
The History of the Present
Chapters two and three provide an overview of the rhetorical maneuvers
Chomsky has engaged in over his academic career in order to foment his serial
revolutions in the disciplinary identity of generative grammar and linguistics, tracing
Chomsky’s rhetorical development from his earliest publications until the Principles and
Parameters framework of the 1980s. In chapter two, I start by outlining the major trends
in the history of North American linguistics in the first half of the twentieth century,
laying out the major features of the thought of important linguists such as Bloomfield and
Zellig Harris. If, indeed, I am to demonstrate the boldness and novelty of Chomsky’s
propositions, especially in regard to the notion of autonomous syntax, I will need to
present the ideas and work of earlier 20th century linguists so that they can be compared
with Chomsky’s methods. This is also important if I am to avoid the maneuver of
Chomsky and his followers making straw men the post-Bloomfieldians. Later in chapter
two I work through Chomsky’s earliest publications up until the early sixties, including
his famous 1957 book Syntactic Structures — a text that in many accounts of the history
of generative grammar is treated as the text that caused the broader Chomskyan
revolution.
Oenbring / 33
Chapter three covers the history of generative grammar from 1965’s Aspects of
the Theory of Syntax until relatively recently, avoiding extensive attention to the
Minimalist Program, as it is treated separately in chapter seven. In chapter three, I work
from the Aspects, up through the Extended Standard Theory, up to the Government and
Binding/Principles and Parameters approach. For my rhetorical analysis I focus
primarily on Chomsky’s major works like Studies on Semantics in Generative Grammar
(1972) and Lectures on Government and Binding (1981).
Speaking of the ascent of the generative approach as a revolution is, of course, to
offer a somewhat romanticized portrait of the institutional ascent of generative grammar.
What’s more, it is important to keep in mind that Chomksy has also, due to his activism,
been a huge figure on the American radical left, a revolutionary symbol, a place that no
doubt has helped him position himself as a prophet in the wilderness in his scholarship on
language. Accordingly, the fourth chapter analyzes a handful of ways that Chomsky has
worked to build his revolutionary ethos, paying special attention to how Chomsky has
told the history of generative grammar and the inevitable role that Chomsky’s political
work has played in solidifying the idea of Chomsky as a ‘revolutionary’ scientist.
Another major topic of chapter four is how Chomsky and his followers have told the
history of generative grammar; I analyze Chomsky and his followers’ revolutionary
historiography.
While Chomsky is quite charismatic in his public lectures on both linguistics and
politics, many of his most important linguistic texts are very unwelcoming to readers not
familiar with the technical methodological minutiae of generative grammar at the
Oenbring / 34
moment of the texts’ publications. Despite their technicality, many of Chomsky’s most
technical texts are also some of his most famous and most cited (e.g., Aspects, Sound
Pattern of English, and Lectures on Government and Binding).24 Recognizing that some
of Chomsky’s most influential texts have also been some of his most technical does not,
however, require a retreat to the traditionalist position: that rhetoric has little to no effect
on scholarly discourse. Close attention to the Chomsky’s entire body of work suggests
that he has, in fact, been quite adept at reframing his arguments and his style for different
audiences; Chomsky has several genres available in his repertoire. Indeed, as early his
1966 and 1968 publications Cartesian Linguistics and Language and Mind, we see
Chomsky producing texts arguably designed more to secure the place of his linguistic
theories among a broader academic audience than to influence syntactic theory. This line
of popularly-focused argumentation I shall call Chomsky’s historical/philosophical genre
— a line of Chomsky’s scholarship that uses quite different rhetorical and argumentative
appeals than his technical scholarship.
Following along these lines, chapters five and six look at the question of
audience, and how Chomsky has promoted his ideas by fashioning his arguments in a
manner that accords with the needs of his various audiences. In these chapters I
investigate the specific rhetorical and stylistic features of the different forms of writing in
which the scholarship of generative grammar is manifested, paying specific attention to
24
This fact would, at first, seem to directly contradict a commonly made claim by rhetoricians of
science: that we can account for a text’s success (or lack thereof) by examining its style and/or its
packaging (see, for example, McCloskey’s The Rhetoric of Economics and/or Gross’ The
Rhetoric of Science). That is to say, if Chomsky’s most successful texts are also some of his
most inaccessible, then it would appear that what other scholars appreciated about the texts were
the texts’ ideas and propositions - not the author’s style.
Oenbring / 35
each of the following styles of text: the research article in generative grammar
(something that Chomsky himself has produced few if any of); the linguistics textbook,
with special attention to the place that Chomsky and his project have played in linguistics
textbooks over time; and the differences between Chomsky’s writing aimed at a general
academic audience and his writing aimed at specialists in the field of generative
grammar. The former two are the primary object of chapter five.
Chapter six overviews the rhetorical features of Chomsky’s texts aimed at general
academic audiences and traces a specific change in Chomsky’s argumentation in what I
have called his historical/philosophical genre. Chomsky’s philosophical/historical texts
are, indeed, remarkable rhetorical artifacts. In these texts Chomsky directly positions his
linguistic ideas in relation to broad historical trends in scholarship and philosophy (he
has, for example, explicitly connected his ideas with the rationalist and dualist tradition in
philosophy). In chapter six, I also analyze a recent shift in Chomsky’s
historical/philosophical reasoning; Chomsky has, in the past ten years, gone from
connecting his view of the mind with dualist philosophers to arguing actively against the
dualist view of the mind-body problem. This move, I argue, has been done in order to
attempt to articulate yet another revolutionary vision for the program of generative
grammar.
The final chapter, chapter seven, serves as a conclusion for my history of
generative grammar and the study itself. Most of the chapter focuses on Chomsky’s
argumentation under what he has called the Minimalist Program (see, for example,
Chomsky [1995]). Finishing with the Minimalist Program is appropriate not only
Oenbring / 36
because it is the most recent officially sanctioned version of generative grammar, but also
because Chomsky’s argumentation has become more ambiguously realist under MP; he
has become more likely to suggest that the generative approach may not be uncovering
unambiguous properties of the human mind (see, for example, his hedging in The
Architecture of Language). Furthermore, MP has been more controversial among
syntacticians — even among traditional supporters of generative grammar — than
Chomsky’s previous programs. That is to say, the revolution may be finally withering.
Nevertheless, MP takes one of the boldest assumptions of generative grammar — namely
the well-formed nature of natural languages — and pushes it to its logical conclusion.
Indeed, despite the fact that Chomsky may have lost a substantial portion of his flock,
Chomsky remains, characteristically, as bold as ever.
Oenbring / 37
Chapter 2: Creating the Research Space of Generative Grammar: From Bloomfield
to Syntactic Structures
Much of [Chomsky’s] work … has been more impressive for its rhetoric of claim and
counter claim than for the light it has thrown on language.
Moore and Carling, 1982
Introduction
The story of the so-called ‘Chomskyan Revolution’ — what Matthews
roguishly refers to as “1957 and All That” (Matthews [1993: 1]) — has been told many
times, by many commentators. These descriptions range from near hagiography (Lyons
[1970]; Newmeyer25 [1980 (1986)] and [1986]; Anderson [1985]; and Barsky [1997]
and [2007]) to more critical accounts (Sampson [1980]; Matthews [1993]; Harris
[1993]; Harlow [1995]; Tomalin [2006]) to attempts to debunk (Murray [1980] and
[1993]). While the story of the Chomskyan revolution has seen much scholarly
attention — attention that Chomsky’s critics no doubt see as unwarranted (and only
serving to reinscribe a folk narrative serving Chomsky) — this study would not be
complete without substantive analysis of how Chomsky and his followers rhetorically
fomented what must be acknowledged to be a coup in the disciplinary identity of
linguistics in the fifties and sixties. This story, the story of the Chomskyan revolution
25
I should disclose that even though I critique Newmeyer, I owe a seminar that I took from him
for giving me my first serious introduction to the field of the history of linguistics. I shall be
always grateful for the help he has offered me.
Oenbring / 38
— along with the stories of Chomsky’s subsequent (at least rhetorical) revolutions in
the study of generative grammar that he has attempted to foment over the past few
decades — is the story presented in the coming pages. One should remember,
however, that my goal in this chapter — as with this study as a whole — is neither
hagiography, nor is it to directly debunk Chomsky’s theories. Rather, the goal is to
attempt to account for Chomksy’s remarkable continual success as a rhetor — both in
his ability to spread his theories and in his ability to position himself as the arbiter of
disciplinary methods and goals (i.e., his positioning himself as author).
Of course, I believe that my account of the Chomsky’s revolutions has several
things to offer that other versions of the story don’t. As ardent generative grammarians,
the stories that Newmeyer and Lyons each tell attribute Chomsky’s success to the
usefulness and correctness of his ways of modeling human language; they believe that
generative grammar won because it is correct and/or uniquely valuable. What’s more,
they often follow Chomsky’s accounts of the history of linguistics to the letter. Murray
(1980) and (1993), a sociologist, and Huck and Goldsmith (1995) prefer instead to
connect Chomsky’s success with his institutional triumph; Chomsky, according to these
scholars, succeeded in securing and maintaining the dominance of the approaches he
favored because his version of generative grammar and its successors were quickly
established as the guiding paradigm in several institutions with both graduate programs
and sufficient funding.26 While institutional sanctioning no doubt has played an
important role in the continued dominance of generative grammar, to suggest that
26
Huck and Goldsmith connect the failure of generative semantics not with intrinsic problems
with its models, but rather with its promoters’ inability to achieve institutional critical mass.
Oenbring / 39
generative grammar succeeded merely because of its institutional support neglects to
account for how Chomsky has profoundly altered the disciplinary imagination and
identity of linguistics. Indeed, even scholars that challenge or display no deference to
Chomsky’s work have had to define — and have had their project defined — in relation
to generative grammar. As Sampson notes, “those scholars who acknowledge no …
obligation [to Chomsky] are seen (and see themselves) as ‘anti-Chomskyans’ as much as
proponents of their own views” (Sampson 130).
As a whole, histories of generative grammar have neglected more recent
developments; historians of generative grammar have focused largely on the period
between 1957’s Syntactic Structures27 and 1970’s “Remarks on Nominalization,” the
time of the advent of generative grammar until the time of Chomsky’s most important
rejoinder to his debates with the generative semantics movement.28
The focus on time
period is understandable. In this time period Chomsky and his followers dramatically
reframed the underlying goals and identity of mainstream ‘scientific’ linguistics.
Moreover, through his rhetorical work in the generative semantics debates, Chomsky
positioned himself as generative grammar’s one and only final prophet; he positioned
himself as the ultimate arbiter of the boundaries of generative methodology —
A notable exception to the contrary is Tomalin’s recent (2006) book Linguistics and the Formal
Sciences which draws connections between Chomsky’s early work and contemporary work in
formal logic.
28
As the generative semantics movement has been a major focus of several studies on the history
of generative grammar (i.e., Newmeyer [1980 (1986)], Harris [1993], Huck and Goldsmith
[1995], Seuren [1998: 502-527]), I avoid extensive analysis of this period.
27
Oenbring / 40
boundaries that, at times, seem more motivated by prophetic inspiration than empirical
reality.29
This limitation of time period is particularly clear in the only scholarship in the
rhetoric of science tradition directly analyzing Chomsky’s rhetoric: Randy Allen Harris’
four 1989-1994 publications on the history of generative grammar — the most substantial
of which is his 1993 book The Linguistics Wars.30 Of Harris’ four publications on the
history of generative grammar, however, only in his 1989 article “Argumentation in
Chomsky’s Syntactic Structures” does Harris offer extensive rhetorical analysis of the
setup and function of a particular text by Chomsky, with the rest of his publications
leaning more toward cataloguing the history of discipline. The Linguistics Wars, for
example, focuses mostly on the debates in the late sixties and early seventies between
Chomsky and the generative semantics movement. The Linguistics Wars, however,
seems to overstate the oppositional nature of the interpretive semantics/generative
semantics ‘debate’. That is to say, Harris seems to favor the hypothesis, at least
implicitly, that Chomsky succeeded because of the way he managed his specific
29
Indeed, there are many fewer works tackling in a substantive way more recent developments in
the history of generative grammar (i.e., from the 1980s onward). Several works that have focused
on more recent developments have, however, taken the hagiographic approach (see, for example,
the second edition [1986] of Newmeyer’s Linguistic Theory in America and his [1996]
Generative Linguistics: a Historical Perspective). Similarly, Haley and Lunsford’s Noam
Chomsky (1993), while spending significant time on developments since the eighties, take too
many of Chomsky’s claims at face value. Matthews (1993) devotes only nineteen pages to the
then current approach Principles and Parameters. While Sampson (2005) focuses largely on
more recent developments, he focuses largely on Chomsky’s popularizer Stephen Pinker rather
than developments within generative grammar proper. A notable exception to this lack of
attention to Chomsky’s more recent works by historians of linguistics is Seuren’s Chomsky’s
Minimalism.
30
Indeed, The Linguistics Wars and Harris’ three other publications on Chomsky’s rhetoric focus
almost exclusively on Chomsky’s ideas up to the Extended Standard Theory of the early 1970s;
Harris has little to say about Chomsky’s ideas since the seventies.
Oenbring / 41
rejoinders to the debate; he construes The Linguistics Wars as Italian opera rather than an
as small academic debate involving only a handful of actors. Accordingly, The
Linguistics Wars spends a lot of time closely cataloguing the he said, she said31 of the
specific actors’ rejoinders to the disagreement between interpretive semantics and
generative semantics.32
Indeed, although Harris does a great job of chronicling the various actors’
rejoinders — in addition to presenting much valuable information gleaned from his direct
correspondence with the invested actors — his account, by favoring the he said, she said,
neglects that Chomsky’s works have almost always focused on articulating and
rearticulating high-level meta-methodological frameworks. Rather than intimating as
Harris does that Chomsky succeeded because of his ability to outmaneuver dissenting
voices (there have been plenty of dissenting voices throughout the history of generative
grammar), I argue that Chomsky has succeeded largely through his rhetorical packaging
31
Sadly, however, the end result is more he said, he said.
However, only a handful of Chomsky’s publications during what has come to be called the
linguistics wars directly attempted to refute claims made by the generative semanticists. Indeed,
Langendoen, a long-time generativist, suggests in his review of The Linguistics Wars in
Language that Harris overstates the oppositional nature of the so-called Extended Standard
Theory (articulated by Chomsky starting with “Remarks” [1970] as a reframing of what Chomsky
has called the Standard Theory – articulated by Katz and Postal [1964] and Chomsky [1965]).
Langendoen’s primary contention with Harris’ book is that “Chomsky did not develop EST as a
response to the GS attack on ST, but rather because he was dissatisfied with ST for reasons of his
own” (584); the Extended Standard Theory, according to Langendoen, developed out of
Chomsky’s own rearticulating of the model of generative grammar stemming from his own
intuition of how the model should be set up.32 (Of course, when assessing Langendoen’s analysis
of Harris, we should take into consideration that Langendoen, as a generative grammarian, has in
his best interest to promote the unconstrained genius reading of Chomsky’s work. What’s more,
Langendoen’s claims must be filtered through the fact that he himself participated in a work
seeking a return to the Standard Theory away from the Extended Standard Theory [see, for
example, Bever, Katz, and Langendoen (1976)].)
32
Oenbring / 42
and repackaging of his grand propositions and his rhetorical construction of grand
epistemological ruptures with earlier programs of scholarship. (This is, of course, in
addition to the genuine novelty and the appearance of explanatory efficacy built into his
propositions.) Indeed, Chomsky’s ability to demarcate the approaches he has favored as
the most properly scientific approaches to study human languages has been a result of his
constant work to rearticulate and reframe the central models constituting the disciplinary
identity of generative syntax and linguistics as a whole — rather than through his work to
directly refute the claims of opposing theories.
That is to say, rhetorically, Chomsky
has not worked as much to defend his own goal as he has to successively move the goal
throughout the game.
By taking a more expansive view of the history of generative grammar, and
considering in a substantial way Chomsky’s rhetorical formulations since his unveiling of
the Government and Binding (later renamed Principles and Parameters) in the 1980s (in
addition to paying more attention to developments in Chomsky’s writing and thought
before Syntactic Structures), I hope to demonstrate that there exist general principles in
Chomsky’s modus operandi for his unveiling of new models throughout his body of
work; we can, I believe, uncover general principles in Chomsky’s rhetoric throughout his
entire oeuvre. These rhetorical approaches have, furthermore, been adopted in varying
degrees by his followers in support of the program of generative grammar. Indeed,
Chomsky himself has, at certain points in his career, used similar sets of talking points —
claims that he has for certain periods of time made over and over.
Oenbring / 43
In the coming two chapters, I shall attempt to describe the unique features of each
of the various programs that Chomsky has sponsored and attempt to describe how
Chomsky used language in order to achieve these successive revolutions, contextualizing
Chomsky’s claims within the environments in which they were articulated.33 As I
suggest, the various changes to the program of generative grammar that Chomsky has
proposed have been more changes in the rhetorical framework used to legitimate the
project of generative grammar than substantive changes in core methodological
commitments. The historical narrative that I offer in the following two chapters is the
backbone of this study, the trunk from which my later analyses will branch.
Of course, no more should be said about the various models of generative
grammar that Chomsky has espoused without recognizing that Chomsky has himself
rhetorically created these ruptures, these seeming epistemological revolutions. Indeed, by
working rhetorically to change both the names and the guiding methodologies of the
current research paradigm (i.e., changing the disciplinary identity of generative grammar
and actively attempting to construct a series of epistemological ruptures), Chomsky has
been able to circumscribe boundaries for generative work more or less associated with his
own person; through his rhetorical creation of these disciplinary revolutions, Chomsky
has written those that disagree with his methods out of the current research paradigm.34
However, I stop my analysis before proceeding to Chomsky’s most recent framework for
generative grammar, the Minimalist Program, as that framework is the focus of chapters six and
seven.
34
Similarly, Chomsky has successfully spread his own version(s) of the history of generative
grammar. This is a task that he has been so successful at that it has become almost impossible for
historians of linguistics — even those critical of Chomsky’s project — to avoid the dichotomies
that Chomsky has himself set up (e.g., the dichotomy between evaluation procedures and
discovery procedures). Indeed, I fully acknowledge that many of the dichotomies that I use are
33
Oenbring / 44
Bloomfield, Logical Positivism, and Autonomous Linguistics
In order to account for Chomsky’s dramatic refocusing of the disciplinary identity
of linguistics in North America in the later half of the 20th century — and why his
rhetoric of language as biology has had such profound effects — one must take into
consideration the fact that early in the 20th century many of the most important scholars
of language explicitly connected the raison d’être of linguistics as an autonomous field of
inquiry with an understanding of language as a social fact; they authorized linguistics as
an independent and unique field by accepting that there exists a level of description for
languages that can be accessed without positing the existence of structures in the mind.
The linguist whose work did most to solidify this orientation toward the study of
language was Leonard Bloomfield (1887-1949), a prime mover in the founding of the
main professional society for the study of linguistics in North America: the Linguistic
Society of America (see, for example, Bloomfield [1922 (1970)]).
Contemporary Western linguists’ self-understanding of their discipline as a
science stems ultimately (like many of the first generation of American linguists [e.g.,
Boas and Sapir]) from 19th century Germany. There historically-oriented philologists had
made impressive achievements postulating sound change laws, speaking openly of their
task as Sprachwissenschaft. While Bloomfield, himself stemming from German Jewish
essentially the same dichotomies that Chomsky himself has drawn. The difference between
Chomsky’s use of these distinctions and my use of these distinctions is this: whereas Chomsky
uses these dichotomies to achieve an end, I use point out the dichotomies in order to demonstrate
the rhetorical nature of Chomsky’s project.
Oenbring / 45
immigrants,35 received from 19th Century German studies of language the notion of
linguistics as a science, he, however, forged a distinct scientific identity for American
linguistics based on scrupulous empirical study of contemporary languages, largely
Native American ones, in their synchronic, static state. In this regard, Bloomfield’s
scientific identity for linguistics was distinctly opposed to 19th Century historicallyfocused work. As Hymes and Fought note, the structural methods promoted by
Bloomfield became in a substantial way “the central focus and ideology of [the]
organized profession” of North American linguists (Hymes and Fought 51).
Indeed, there can be little doubt that Bloomfield’s fame and influence was a direct
result of his rhetorical success in promoting linguists’ self understanding of their task as
an autonomous empirical science. As Hymes and Fought note, Bloomfield “gave recruits
to the aspiring science, not yet anywhere a recognized discipline, an overt criterion of
identity, [and] an idiom of boundary maintenance” (96). That is to say, Bloomfield
offered linguists a clear understanding of what was scientific linguistics and what wasn’t
scientific linguistics.
As many scholars have acknowledged (e.g., Matthews [1993]; Graffi [2001]),
Bloomfield had by the 1920s discarded the mentalist orientation — inspired by the
theories of psychologist Wilhelm Wundt — that informed his first major text An
Introduction to the Study of Language (1914), preferring instead to understand the object
of linguistics as a disembodied social system. Indeed, Bloomfield’s 1922 review of the
second edition of the Cours describes the language system and the object of linguistics as
35
His parents were not, however, the source of his training.
Oenbring / 46
a “a complex and arbitrary system of social habit, imposed upon the individual, and not
directly subject to psychologic interpretation; all psychology will ever be able to do is to
provide the general background which makes the thing possible” (107).36 That is to say,
Bloomfield takes the Cours’ notion of langue and moves it decisively into the camp of
language as a social fact.37
Bloomfield’s conversion to anti-mentalism, largely a product of his connections
while at Ohio State with early behaviorist38 psychologist Weiss, should not, however, be
overemphasized. Indeed, one of the most important rhetorical tactics that Chomsky and
his supporters have used in order to stage their coup was to draw connections between
Bloomfield’s followers and behaviorist psychology — with behaviorist psychology itself
Similarly, in a 1927 article “On Recent Work,” Bloomfield directly connects the agenda of and
impetus behind autonomous linguistics with its avoidance of both introspective methods and
positing dubious structures in the mind. Specifically, Bloomfield suggests that:
linguists are today agreed upon the essentials of their method; their disagreements can be
precisely stated and discussed upon common ground; they do not in their actual work use
the troublesome introspective terminology; they are not disturbed by the impossibility,
today, of reducing human conduct to physiologic (neurologic) terms; yet they employ no
extra-material forces. As, in general, neither psychology nor the other human sciences
have reached this point, the quickening of interest in linguistics may be in part due to its
occupying a strategic position from which to attack the study of man. (174)
As this quote suggests, Bloomfield explicitly connects the identity of linguistic inquiry to its
avoidance of “troublesome introspective terminology,” not worrying that contemporary linguistic
inquiry posits no physiological mechanisms to undergird their methods. That is to say,
Bloomfield explicitly defines the reason for being of linguistics in direct opposition to an
undergirding methodological assumption that he himself had used earlier in his career.
37
For more on Bloomfield’s relationship to the Cours see Koerner’s “Leonard Bloomfield and
the Cours de Linguistique Général.”
38
Broadly stated, behaviorism is the notion, widespread in American psychology departments in
the forties and fifties (and viewed with much scientific cachet in many areas of the academy,
including by many linguists), that human and animal behavior can molded in an almost limitless
way by the surrounding environment and is ultimately describable in terms of stimuli and
responses — a position that seemingly leaves little room for a rich notion of biological nature.
36
Oenbring / 47
being a straw man (see, for example, Language and Mind).39 Rather, Bloomfield’s desire
to construe language as a disembodied social system should be understood as a reaction
to the speculative, intuition-focused nature of much work in psychology early in the 20th
century (i.e., Freud and Jung).40 Accordingly, Bloomfield’s magisterial 1933 summation
of the findings of linguistic science up to the time, his book Language, a book that seems
remarkably fresh even today, adopts, as the later Bloomfield usually does elsewhere, a
perfunctorily behaviorist outlook in the interest of according with the methodological
assumptions of scrupulous empirical science.41 (Bloomfield, for example, takes a
materialist stance in suggesting that the meaning of any utterance can only be gauged by
its effects of upon others [see, for example, 25-33].)
An important methodologist, in addition to being an accomplished fieldworker,
Bloomfield demonstrated a direct concern with debates over the foundations of science,
philosophy, and philosophy of science common in the early to mid 20th century. In his
attempt to shore up the foundations of linguistic inquiry, making it a valuable addition to
an upcoming unified scientific description of the world, Bloomfield found direct
inspiration in the work of logical positivist philosophers by the 1930s (e.g., Carnap [see,
for example, Tomalin (93)]), a group that shared Bloomfield’s desire to save inquiry from
As Osgood notes in Rieber’s Dialogues on the Psychology of Language and Thought (1982):
“Many linguists and psycholinguists use behaviorism as a whipping boy these days — which is
not really abnormal in scientific controversy, of course! But unfortunately (and polemically) they
usually select the most simple and unsophisticated model of the opposing paradigm — the one
most often presented to sophomores in Introductory Psychology” (10).
40
See, for example, Joseph (1995).
41
Indeed, the most polemically behaviorist and materialist of Bloomfield’s pieces, a 1930 article
“Linguistics as a Science,” Bloomfield himself later critiqued for its heavy reliance on predictions
and pushing too far into the realm of “prophecy” (“Language or Ideas?” 322).
39
Oenbring / 48
metaphysics and the dubious mentalist theories of language and mind that had played an
important role early in the 20th Century.
Briefly and broadly stated, the logical positivist42 program encompassed the
following commitments: a desire to mathematize and formalize propositions under
analysis (and a belief that such formalization adds both accuracy and meaning to
explanations); a preference for axioms and clear and distinct propositions; a desire to
atomize (breaking claims apart into smaller, and supposedly more testable units); a
revulsion from metaphysics and metaphor; a distrust of meaning outside of that offered
by the formal operations and the manipulation of those formal operations; and, as
aforementioned, a desire to avoid positing the existence of dubious mental states. (For a
more expansive discussion of Bloomfield’s relationship to contemporary developments in
formal logic and philosophy see Tomalin [2006].)43
42
Of course, one should be careful to distinguish between the specific group of analytic
philosophers now known as the logical positivists with the more general notion of positivism, a
broader tradition of thought.
43
The thirties were, indeed, a time of great optimism that a grand unification was underway at the
confluence of scientific empiricism and logical positivism (see, for example, Esper 211).
Psychologist Stevens claims, for example, in a famous 1939 article “Psychology and the Science
of Science” that:
So numerous and insistent are the words of those who have been seized by the spirit of
this movement that they swell the pages of several new journals … There are articles by
philosophers, mathematicians, and scientists … they all assert essentially that science
seeks to generate confirmable propositions by fitting a formal system of symbols
(language, mathematics, logic) to empirical observations, and that the propositions of
science have empirical significance only when their truth can be demonstrated by a set of
concrete operations. (Stevens 222, qtd. in Esper 211)
Similarly, Bloomfield’s 1935 presidential address to the LSA, later reprinted in Language (1936),
“Language or Ideas?” directly lauds the work of logical positivists of the Vienna Circle
(specifically Neurath and Carnap), suggesting their assumptions to offer the proper foundations
for inquiry in linguistics and in the sciences as a whole. In this piece Bloomfield is particularly
impressed by Neurath and Carnap’s claims that “all scientifically meaningful statements” can be
directly translated into “physical terms” – “that is, into statements about movements which can be
observed and described in coordinates of space and time” (322).
Oenbring / 49
Bloomfield’s 1939 text Linguistic Aspects of Science, his addition to the
International Encyclopedia of Unified Science, edited by among others, Carnap himself,
demonstrates similar deference to logical positivist ideas.44 Accordingly, Bloomfield puts
sharp boundaries on the proper scope of linguistic inquiry, placing focus on the phoneme
all while working to evacuate notions of meaning from linguistic inquiry. Specifically,
Bloomfield suggests that:
we do not possess a workable classification of everything in the universe, and,
apart from language, we cannot even envisage anything of the sort; the forms of
language, on the other hand, thanks to their phonemic structure, can be classified
and ordered in all manner of ways and can be subjected to strict agreements of
correspondence and operation. For this reason, linguistics classifies speech-forms
by forms and not by meaning. (24)
In accordance with logical positivist ideals, Bloomfield, in this quote, reduces the
primary focus of linguistics to one of its most precisely formulated and mathematically
elegant concepts: the phoneme.45 What’s more, Bloomfield attempts to avoid the tricky
44
Although not directly citing any logical positivist philosophers (i.e., taking place before he
explicitly promoted their work), Bloomfield’s earlier 1926 article in Language “A Set of
Postulates for the Science of Language” demonstrates clear deference to the program of
axiomatization. Rather than citing logical positivist philosophers, a group whose work had not yet
spread widely, Bloomfield cites Weiss’ “A Set of Postulates for Psychology” as inspiration for
his “A Set of Postulates,” a piece whose goal is to precisely and formally define several of the
most important concepts in linguistics at the time (e.g., morphemes and phonemes). Regardless of
what motivated Bloomfield to write it, “A Set of Postulates” directly inspired important later
work, including Bloch’s “A Set of Postulates for Phonemic Analysis.” Indeed, Twadell’s 1935
article in Language Monograph “On Defining the Phoneme” explicitly connects the desire among
later linguists to precisely articulate assumptions and define terms with Bloomfield’s “A Set of
Postulates” (56).
45
Note that the unification of the sciences proposed here is distinctly logical positivist in nature;
it is the product of distinct and autonomous academic disciplines.
Oenbring / 50
notion of meaning. Indeed, Bloomfield’s work promoted what would become a long
moratorium on the concept of meaning in North American linguistics.46
While Bloomfield’s work no doubt played an important role in promoting
linguists’ esteem for precise, formal definitions, anyone familiar with the turgid writing
style of much work in generative grammar (i.e., the tradition of thought that has taken up
the banner of formal linguistics) will find Bloomfield’s “A Set of Postulates” in
comparison remarkably welcoming and readable. Although what has come to be known
as (and has taken up the banner of) formal linguistics (i.e., generative grammar) has
usually claimed superiority for itself on the basis of what it has claimed to be its more
clearly articulated propositions, generative grammar has also, ironically, solidified the
assumption among many linguists that scholarship must be difficult to understand and
abstract in order to be scientific. (Furthermore, despite its claims to rely on precisely
formulated axioms, generative grammar often relies heavily on vague and alluring
concepts like deep structure.) The turn toward abstrusely formal prose and logic can be
directly traced back to Chomsky and his mentor Zellig Harris. In comparison,
Bloomfield’s work seems welcoming and decidedly not enamored with technical,
abstruse methodological issues.
46
The suggestion that post-Bloomfieldians were totally repulsed by notions of meaning is part
and parcel of most accounts of the history of American linguistics. (For a developed picture see
Koerner’s “American Structuralist Linguistics and the ‘Problem of Meaning.”) However, Hymes
and Fought protest, suggesting directly that “the analysis of underlying relationships,
semantically significant, was pursued by leading linguists of the 1930s” (3).
Oenbring / 51
The Post-Bloomfieldians
While Bloomfield died in 1949, he remained through his writings the most
important patron methodologist in North American linguistics into the early fifties. In
fact, in histories of 20th century linguistics it is common to refer to the period of the
forties to the early fifties as the post-Bloomfieldian period, a term that I have used and
will continue to use in this study. (Other labels for what I shall call the postBloomfieldians include the following: structuralist linguistics, structural linguistics,
American structuralism, neo-Bloomfieldian linguistics, Bloomfieldian linguistics, and
descriptive linguistics.) It is important to remember, however, that construing all North
American scholars of language in this period as a single, unified group neglects their
diversity. (Indeed, Hymes and Fought have devoted a whole volume to exploding the
myth of the homogeneity of the post-Bloomfieldians.) As Lepschy notes, Bloomfield’s
“thought is more complex, at times more torturous and contradictory, and certainly more
interesting than it is made out to be” (qtd. in Hymes and Fought 111).
Although many post-Bloomfieldian linguists did indeed self-identify using one of
the various labels for this group, several of these terms — including the term postBloomfieldian — are terms that have largely been spawned by historians of linguistics
rather than by the original linguists themselves. Our willingness to speak of the North
American scholars of language in the forties and early fifties as a single unified group can
to a large extent be traced to Chomsky and his followers’ persistent use of the straw man
to characterize the post-Bloomfieldians; Chomsky and his followers routinely construed
what I have chosen to refer to as the post-Bloomfieldians as an uninspired and
Oenbring / 52
homogeneous group of scholars. (Post-Bloomfieldian is, however, a term that Chomsky
rarely uses. He prefers instead anti-mentalist linguistics or descriptive linguistics, the
latter a term used without negative connotation in his mentor Zellig Harris’ Methods in
Structural Linguistics [and even in Chomsky’s earliest book-length manuscript The
Logical Structure of Linguistic Theory (e.g., 77)].)
While it is indeed an oversimplification to suggest that there ever existed a single
unified post-Bloomfieldian method, many of the most prominent linguists in North
America in the forties and fifties (e.g., Bernard Bloch, Zellig Harris, Charles Hockett,
George Trager, and Robert Hall) did, in fact, share many common methods. In the
constellation of methods applied and connected in various forms by these linguists, one
can find all of the following methodological commitments and points of disciplinary
identity: logical positivism; behaviorism; empiricism; close attention to corpora
(collections of texts from which empirical results are obtained, used in order to avoid
relying upon intuitions of regarding usage and well-formedness); anti-mentalism;
description of texts from the bottom-up, without the mixing of levels (e.g., first analyze
phonemes and then proceed to morphemes and eventually discourse features); and,
finally, a desire to describe non-Western languages.
Fieldwork was, indeed, very important to North American linguists at this time,
and it is not insignificant that Bloomfield, a scholar who demonstrated deference to
precise mathematical formulations, was the most important patron methodologist of the
day. No doubt connecting Bloomfield’s preference for axioms with Chomsky’s eventual
rise, psychologist Esper suggests that “Bloomfield’s linking of linguistic meanings to
Oenbring / 53
perfected scientific definitions was unfortunate, and irrelevant to the methodology of
descriptive linguistics” (Esper 219). If, indeed, one’s desire is to describe a language in
an empirically scrupulous way, formalism and explicit definitions, although seemingly
increasing the explanation of the analysis, can often be more of a hindrance than a help.
Bloch and Trager’s 1942 text Outline of Linguistic Analysis is an important and
representative linguistics textbook of post-Bloomfieldian era.47 Although citing few
primary sources directly due to the pedagogic nature of the text, Bloch and Trager,
nevertheless, demonstrate clear deference to Bloomfield’s language as a social fact
understanding of the Cours. In the book’s earliest basic definitions of terms, Bloch and
Trager define language as a “system of arbitrary vocal symbols” (5). Continuing along
these lines, Bloch and Trager define the grammar of language as “simply an orderly
description of the way people in a given society talk — of the sounds that people utter in
various situations, and the acts which accompany or follow the sounds” (6).
Alluding in the next paragraph to the arbitrary nature of the sign using a version
of the horse/Equus caballus example articulated in the Cours (i.e., with the Cours clearly
in mind), Bloch and Trager define the linguist as “a scientist whose subject-matter is
language, and his task is to analyze and classify the facts of speech as he hears them
uttered by native speakers or as he finds them recorded in writing” (8). That is to say,
they define the task of the linguist as analyzing and classifying speech and texts with
little attention paid to explanation. They continue later, “attempts to answer the question
Indeed, Anderson suggests Trager to be “perhaps the most radical of those claiming to develop
Bloomfield’s thought directly, especially regarding the rigor (and vigor) with which they rejected
any role for considerations of meaning in linguistic analysis or description” (278-279).
47
Oenbring / 54
Why? in other ways — by appeals to psychology, philosophy, or abstract logic — may
seem esthetically more satisfying, but are never anything better than guesses, unprovable
and fruitless” (9). The task of the linguist to Bloch and Trager is quite clear: to carefully
catalogue empirical findings, limiting explanations to account for the empirical results,
all while avoiding positing dubious structures in the mind or making reference to
underlying psychology or biology.
While the post-Bloomfieldians avoided notions of psychology and biology in the
interests of making their work more scientific, their avoidance of these notions should not
be misconstrued as their lacking a concept of a limiting human biology; postBloomfieldian anti-mentalism should not be misconstrued as something resembling
radical poststructuralist anti-essentialism (e.g., those cultural and feminist theorists who
suggest that standards of physical attractiveness are purely cultural codes and are not
motivated in any way by underlying human biology). For example, prominent postBloomfieldian Martin Joos, whose assertion that languages can “differ from each other
without limit and in unpredictable ways” has been a favorite topos for attack among
generativists (see, for example, Chomsky [1964: 77], Anderson [1985: 224], Newmeyer
[2005: ix]) was, nevertheless, not afraid to elsewhere define language as “a set of neural
patterns in the speech center” (1948: 99, qtd. in Matthews 128); even Joos was not
against stating in print that human language is, at its core, a biological phenomenon.48
Note, however, that Joos’ “without limit and in unpredictable ways” also became a rallying
point for some anthropological linguists (see Hymes and Fought [1981: 57]).
48
Oenbring / 55
Post-Bloomfieldian Phonology
While the post-Bloomfieldians did, in fact, pay attention to most of what we now
recognize as the major areas of study in linguistics (including phonetics, phonology,
morphology, and even syntax49), one of the primary concerns of the post-Bloomfieldians
was the phoneme.50 That is to say, their unique concept of the phoneme served the postBloomfieldians as a point of disciplinary identity — (i.e., a concept that helped organize
how the discipline understood itself and its unique offerings to human knowledge).51 Of
course, how exactly to define a phoneme has been a point of some contention, and many
players (including, of course, Chomsky52) have attempted to offer unique definitions.
Having one’s definition of the phoneme serve as the definition of the phoneme has, I
hope to show, been the key to Top Linguist status.
Broadly stated, the phoneme is the smallest possible distinct sound or unit of
structure in a language that plays some part in distinguishing meaning (meaning being
always a tricky, vaguely defined notion). In many accounts, cataloguing the phonemes of
a language leads to an inventory of the unique distinct sounds of a language. To use an
example from English, we can, largely unproblematically, place the initial sounds of the
words tag, take, and tinker under the same phoneme /t/.53 (Sound should not, of course,
A nice example of syntax in the post-Bloomfieldian tradition is Fries’ 1952 textbook The
Structure of English.
50
See, for example, Trager (1934) and Swadesh (1934).
51
As Anderson notes, the post-Bloomfieldians “had a strong sense of professional identity,
reinforced by the apparatus of an orthodox academic discipline (a professional society, annual
meetings, the summer Linguistic Institutes, several journals clearly dedicated to their work, etc.);
to a significant extent, that identity was based on the specific claims of structuralist theory to a
uniquely priviledged and scientific view of an important object of study, human language” (311).
52
See, for example, Chomsky and Halle’s The Sound Pattern of English.
53
Phonemes, as suggested here are placed between slashes in their textual representation.
49
Oenbring / 56
be conflated with orthography, as the well-known example of ph and f demonstrates. The
phonemic level of description should not, furthermore, be confused with the phonetic
level, which seeks to present the most precise description of the physical sounds of
human language.)
In certain understandings of the phoneme, a more abstract underlying phoneme
can be realized differently based on its environment of articulation. In such an
understanding of the phoneme, the different speech sounds that constitute the same
phoneme are often called allophones. For example, we can say in English that [pʰ]
(aspirated p)54 as in pit and [p] (unaspirated p) as in spit are allophones of the phoneme
/p/ because native speakers treat them as the same sound. The linguist can develop a
system of rules that accurately describes when the different allophones of a phoneme
occur. For example, in English /p/ is realized as aspirated p whenever it occurs as the
only consonant at the beginning of a stressed syllable or word.55 As this example
suggests, phonemes are, by definition, structured relationships that rely upon no theory of
mind or biology to undergird explanation; the various allophones of a phoneme can be
described as the products of differing phonetic environments. This suggests why the
concept of the phoneme was an attractive point of disciplinary identity for the post-
54
Apirated means co-occurring with the release of a large puff of air. Unaspirated means that no
large puff of air is released.
55
When the particular sounds of phonemes can be accounted for by phonological rules that only
refer to other aspects of sound structure (e.g., stress, clusters, voicing, etc.) and are unconscious
and obligatory, this is referred to as complementary distribution. When one allows for human
variables such as style of speaking in selecting the particular sounds of phonemes, this
relationship is known as free variation. This is not, however, to say that free variation is
unpredictable; rather the difference is that in complementary distribution, unlike free distribution,
phonological rules are unconscious and obligatory.
Oenbring / 57
Bloomfieldians; the concept of the phoneme encodes an elegant formal relationship that
relies upon no theory of meaning or mind.56
Unlike his contemporary Edward Sapir, whose definition of the phoneme focused
on native speakers’ intuitions regarding the reality of phonemes (see, for example, Sapir’s
“The Psychological Reality of the Phoneme”), Bloomfield’s mature definition of the
phoneme avoids reliance on speakers’ intuitions regarding the boundaries between
distinct speech sounds.57 Following the understanding of language as a set of differences
articulated in the Cours, Bloomfield’s Language, in its most technical explication of the
phoneme, defines the concept entirely according to the observed appearance of speech
sounds in language (see Language 78-79) (i.e., in a distributional [statistical/factual
way]); Bloomfield’s defines the concept of the phoneme by reference to the empirical
observation of minimal pairs (pairs of words that differ by only one sound in the same
position). In his technical definition, Bloomfield uses the example of the word pin,
which we easily recognize “ends with the same sound as fin, sin, and tin” (78). After
laying out by the entire repertoire of minimal pairs of pin, Bloomfield concludes his
‘experiment,’ stating decisively that “further experiment fails to reveal any more
replaceable parts in the word pin: we conclude that the distinctive features of this word
are three indivisible units … each of the three is a minimum unit of distinctive soundfeature, a phoneme” (79).
56
For a different account of post-Bloomfieldian phonology see Fudge (1995).
The most thorough take of the history of phonological theory is Stephen Anderson’s Phonology
in the Twentieth Century, an incisive account, despite being decidedly pro-Chomsky.
57
Oenbring / 58
As this example suggests, Bloomfield’s theory of the phoneme is set of structured
relations between sounds, relying on no theory of mind to explain or legitimate it. What’s
more, Bloomfield’s mature theory of the phoneme seems to — I stress only seems to —
avoid extensive reliance upon speaker’s intuitions to mark distinct speech sounds. (One
should, however, remember that Bloomfield’s precise definition of the phoneme is only
part of a much broader discussion of phonemes — of 34 pages — in which much more
‘commonsense’ understandings of the concept [i.e., based on our intuitions of distinct
speech sounds] rule throughout.) What this method leads to, at least in theory, is an
empirically-scrupulous inventory of the specific phonemes of a given language.
While radical empiricism is, for sure, present at the core of Bloomfield’s mature
theory of the phoneme, Bloomfield largely avoided pushing this commitment to its end.
However, many post-Bloomfieldians attempted to push Bloomfield’s concept of the
phoneme in more extreme directions. For example, although Bloomfield did not go far
with the program of developing explicit, rigorous, procedures to define regularities such
as the phoneme, his follower Zellig Harris did (see Lin [2002]).58 Similarly, while
acknowledging that what they are offering is more of a “general guide to the technique”
than “rules to be obeyed in every particular” (40), Bloch and Trager’s Outline,
nevertheless, offers a numbered list of steps for analyzing the phonemes of a particular
language; they push Bloomfield’s ideas regarding phonemic analysis to their logical
conclusion. Continuing, Bloch and Trager advise the would-be linguist to “repeat the
58
Harris directly states in the preface of his Methods in Structural Linguistics that the book owes
most to Bloomfield and his book Language.
Oenbring / 59
operation for all other positions,” in order to “construct a master list of all phonemes”
(Outline of Linguistic Analysis 41).
In Bloch and Trager’s understanding, linguistics is an unapologetically empirical
discipline. Thus, although admitting that one can develop a catalogue of the phonemes of
a language based on the phonetic characteristics of allophones (e.g., “we can group the
English consonant phonemes into voiced and voiceless, or into stops, spirants nasals, and
lateral … and so on” [45]), Bloch and Trager insist that a better definition of the phoneme
is based around the notion of a structural set: a list of occurrences. A structural set is,
according to Bloch and Trager, the following: “a group of all the phonemes which occur
in a given phonetic environment and hence, in that position, directly contrast with each
other.” The ultimate ideal is an account of what Bloch and Trager call phonemic
structure: “an exhaustive catalog of such sets, each defined by the common function of
its members” (Bloch and Trager 45). While such a catalog of sets would, indeed, be a
beautiful empirical achievement, its utility as anything other than a catalog is unclear.
In some versions of the history of American linguistics, a corollary to the postBloomfieldian empirically-focused theory of the phoneme is the notion that the linguist
should not mix levels when defining phonemes (i.e., that phonemes should be thought of
as totally distinct from morphology, syntax, and discourse features and that these
boundaries between levels should be clear). Although this claim was indeed stated in
work by important post-Bloomfieldian methodologists Hockett (1942 [1957]) and Harris
(1951), Hockett’s and Harris’ proscription against mixing levels does not appear to have
been widely adopted by American linguists. Rather the inclusion of the proscription
Oenbring / 60
against mixing levels in accounts of post-Bloomfieldian methods seems to be more a
product of Chomsky and his followers seeking to articulate clear and distinct differences
between their work and the post-Bloomfieldians than something stemming from a the
true state of the discipline in the 1950s; Chomsky and followers such as Newmeyer have
used the alleged post-Bloomfieldian proscription against mixing levels as a way to tell
the story of a neat break that occurred with the rise of generative grammar. As Hymes
and Fought note, “ideological forces, reinforced by ignorance, are no doubt at work” in
how Chomsky and his followers tell the history of American linguistics (127). Citing
rhetorician Kenneth Burke, Hymes and Fought continue, suggesting that “no doubt there
is a purely poetic motive as well: polarized conflict, focused on a single issue, enhances
any narrative” (cf. Burke 1968:380-409).
Harris and Chomsky: Methods and Influence
Traditionally, accounts of how Chomsky caused his dramatic shift in the
disciplinary identity of linguistics focus on the differences and similarities between
Chomsky’s works and the work of the earlier scholars in the field of linguistics (most
notably what have come to be called post-Bloomfieldians). While differences between
Chomsky’s work and that of the post-Bloomfieldians is, of course, an important thread, a
thread that figures substantially in this chapter, one should be skeptical of accounts that
assume in a blasé manner that Chomsky’s work was totally unlike that of previous
linguists (indeed, one of the primary goals of Matthews [1993] is to emphasize the
continuity between Chomsky’s work and the post-Bloomfieldians). Indeed, it is arguable
Oenbring / 61
that Chomsky’s himself has been the driving force behind tendency to frame the early
history of generative grammar as Chomsky vs. the post-Bloomfieldians, something that he
has done in large part by defining his project against that of his mentor Zellig Harris.
Born in 1928 and a true product of Depression-era Philadelphia Jewish culture,
Chomsky received his first introduction to linguistics as an undergrad at the University of
Pennsylvania in the mid to late forties, a time in which linguistics was still a very small
discipline, from leading post-Bloomfieldian linguist Zellig Harris (1909-1992), the
scholar who would eventually serve as his Ph.D. mentor. While all mentors play a role in
shaping the education of their students, Harris’ influence on Chomsky is, according to
both Chomsky and others, especially notable.59 For one, Chomsky has claimed that he
received his first formal introduction to linguistics as an undergraduate student reading
proofs of Harris’ Methods of Structural Linguistics (LSLT 25; The Chomsky Reader 7).60
More importantly, Harris demonstrated to Chomsky that one can balance consistent
political engagement with the cloister of academic life. (Harris was at the time an
important player in Philadelphia Jewish radical intellectual circles.) Indeed, Chomsky has
suggested on several occasions that his interactions with Harris contributed in part to his
decision to pursue academic life instead of following long term his desire to work on
Kibbutzim dedicated to Israeli-Palestinian partnership (e.g., The Chomsky Reader 7).
Harris participated in political work throughout his life, and in his later years — inspired
59
For a good run through of biographic details, especially in regard to the relationship between
Chomsky and Harris , see Barsky (1997), a text that, while informative, takes almost all of
Chomsky’s accounts at face value. Conversely, for a quick, useful, and non-sycophantic
overview of important biographical details see Tomalin (109 -112).
60
One can find evidence in support of Chomsky’s claims to have read the proofs of Harris’
Methods in the preface of the book.
Oenbring / 62
for certain at least in part by the success of his most famous student’s political work —
developed his most comprehensive analysis of contemporary society for the volume The
Transformation of Capitalist Society, a text that was published posthumously in 1997.
Most importantly, Harris’ work had a profound impact on the methods of
scholarship of his most famous student; the methods that Chomsky has espoused have
throughout his career demonstrated clear debt to his mentor. The debts include all of the
following: an obsession with methodology; interest in notions of economy (a version of
Ockham’s razor borrowed from the logical positivists); a willingness to posit byzantine
and abstract logical processes; and even the very notion of transformations (a concept
that would become a hallmark of Chomskyan linguistics) — a notion Harris had
imported from formal logic (see, for example, Carnap’s The Logical Syntax of Language)
and/or by other accounts linear algebra. More generally, Harris was largely an armchair
scholar, not, like many other post-Bloomfieldians, a fieldworker devoted to the
description of Native American languages (see, for example, the work of Hockett,
Swadesh, Voegelin, and others); Harris instilled in Chomsky a belief that linguistics can
be done by massaging data sets in the office rather than through tireless work with
informants.
Summarizing Chomsky’s mentor’s influence on his protégé, Randy Harris61
notes in The Linguistics Wars that the elder Harris “had a fixation on esoteric, if not
peripheral, issues, and a preoccupation with methodology which far outstripped even that
of his contemporaries. He, too, had a somewhat unusual background for a Bloomfieldian
61
No relation, of course.
Oenbring / 63
— coming not from the rolled-up-sleeves-and-loosened-collar world of anthropology, but
the bookish, intensely logical world of Semitic philology” (38). Accordingly,
“Chomsky’s education reflected Harris’s interests closely. In involved work in
philosophy, logic, and mathematics well beyond the normal training for a linguist” (38).
Indeed, Chomsky’s constant interest in questions of methodology throughout his career
— even when his methods have seemingly been at odds with empirical reality — can
directly be traced back to the influence of his mentor.
As I have intimated, Zellig Harris’ scholarship in the forties and fifties was
largely an attempt to formalize procedures of American structuralist linguistics in order
give the system greater rigor.62 Harris, for example, clearly states in the introduction to
his famous 1952 book Methods in Structural Linguistics (the manuscript of which was
completed in 1947) that “the research methods are arranged here in the form of the
successive procedures of analysis imposed by the working linguist upon his data. It is
hoped that presentation of the methods in procedural form and order may help reduce the
impression of sleight of hand that often accompanies more subtle linguistic analysis” (1).
As this quote suggests, Harris sought to develop formal procedures in order to reduce the
intuition, guesswork, and the “impression of sleight of hand”63 that he saw as limitations
to contemporary methods in American linguistics.
This was an interest that Harris maintained throughout his career. (See, for example, Harris’
1968 book Mathematical Structures of Language and his co-written 1989 volume with others The
Form of Information in Science.)
63
Note that Harris’ interest is in reducing the impression of sleight of hand rather than ending the
sleight of hand in itself.
62
Oenbring / 64
Broadly stated, Harris’ project in the forties and fifties was to develop rigorous
empirical procedures for analyzing a corpus of data in a bottom-up manner (i.e., from the
smallest elements [e.g., phonemes] to the largest elements [e.g., discourse features]).64
(Although Chomsky argued against clear divisions between levels in Syntactic
Structures, he still, demonstrating Harris’ influence, separated between levels in his
largest manuscript of the fifties, 1955’s The Logical Structure of Linguistic Theory.)
Harris’ interest in moving from smaller elements to larger elements demonstrates his faith
in inductive procedures, a faith undergirding the logical positivist movement. Harris’
ultimate goal: to develop a thorough, explicitly-formulated set of methods that can
account for all relevant features of a corpus. (The vagueness of this goal is not merely a
result of my specific wording of it.)
Accordingly, Harris’ major work of the period, Methods, seems obsessed with
methodical minutiae. Indeed, Harris’ highly technical methodological expositions, in
particular those dealing with phonemes and morphemes, dominate the body of the nearly
400 page book. Harris’ analyses in Methods are brilliant but difficult to wade through.
While Harris demonstrated a sincere belief in the value of — in addition to rhetorically
over-representing his exclusive use of — inductive procedures, we must remember that
Harris day-to-day methods were not so purely rigid and formal. Indeed, Chomsky has to a
large degree rhetorically created this interpretation of his mentor’s project in order to
define himself against it.
64
See, for example, Harris’ explanation in (2002: 2).
Oenbring / 65
In other work — most directly in his 1952 article in Language “Discourse
Analysis” (the title of which, has, ironically, become the name of one of the most
important, and, depending the scholar doing the analysis, one of the most radical,
language as culture approaches to the study of human language) — Harris introduced the
concept of transformations, a concept that would become deeply associated with
Chomsky’s program, into linguistic theory as way to account for in an empirically
scrupulous way, the arrangement of elements in discourse while reducing the number of
possible syntactic constructions down to a core kernel of mathematically-elegant
formulae (8-9). Harris’ ultimate goal for the concept of transformations was to account
for, and describe using formalism, syntactic “equivalence chains” (10): strings of syntax
that can replace one another.
In Harris’ presentation, the process of finding equivalence chains (a.k.a.
equivalences) starts off by determining “which elements are to be taken as equivalent to
each other” (10). One of the easier-to-explain examples of an equivalence that Harris
offers in the article are the strings the middle of autumn and the end of October, which
both occur in the same environment in Harris’ hypothetical corpus: after the string The
trees turn here in — (see 6). While the article “Discourse Analysis” is, characteristically,
quite bold in its theorizing about methods, the examples of transformations that Harris
offers in the article remain very simple throughout. Indeed, much of Harris’ analysis of
transformations focuses on the example of the passive transformation (e.g., Casals plays
the cello and The cello is played by Casals [19]), a trick of exposition picked up by his
most famous student. (For example, Chomsky’s Syntactic Structures deduces much from
Oenbring / 66
examples relating to a particular morpho-syntactic phenomenon in English auxiliary
verbs — what other linguists have called affix-hopping.)65
Explaining the differences between his project and generative approaches (and,
for certain, rhetorically over-representing his empirical focus to some degree), Harris
suggests in a 1990 piece tracing the development of his own theories “The Background of
Transformational and Metalanguage Analysis,” later republished in The Legacy of Zellig
Harris, that the differences between his theories (analysis) and those of generative
linguists is that “analysis has to identify as far as possible every regularity in speech or
writing, and above all to recognize degeneracies, whereas generating can be done with
just enough information about the language to distinguish in a general way every
utterance from those systematically identical with it” (7). That is to say, whereas the
methods that Harris espouses actively look for “degeneracies” and counterexamples,
generative grammarians assume that there exists an underlying, mathematically-elegant
order to syntactic constructions.
Indeed, one could say that the primary difference between Harris’ and Chomsky’s
mature projects is that the former, unlike the latter, does not assume that the formalisms
(i.e., the ‘metalanguage’) linguists use to describe human languages can be understood as
65
Although Harris introduced the concept of transformations to linguistic theory, transformations
have, of course, become deeply associated with Chomsky’s project. As I have suggested, Harris’
motivation for introducing the concept of the transformation was to reduce the number of
constructions necessary to account for the distribution of items in a corpus. This is markedly
different from the motivation for transformations in generative grammar: as a way to describe the
movement of morphological features or words from a hypothesized level of meaning to a
hypothesized level of sound within a single sentence, all while (at least in theory) making the
whole system simpler and more mathematically elegant. Conversely, in Harris’ work, the
importance of transformations lies more in its ability to account for periphrasis across a corpus,
with emphasis on empirical adequacy.
Oenbring / 67
a standing in for structures in the mind. As Nevin suggests, perhaps the most important
feature of Harris’ project, a feature that distinguishes it from generative grammar is that
the latter “asserts the existence of a biologically innate metalanguage” (Nevin xxvii),
something which Harris does not. Similarly, Harris does not make bold claims that the
methods of analysis that he offers are the ‘correct’ ones or are the only ones that can
accurately describe the processes he is describing; he, unlike his student, largely avoids
what philosophers of science call realist claims. Harris, for example, states directly in the
introduction to Methods that the procedures he offers “are merely ways of arranging the
original data” (3).66
Creating the Research Space of Generative Grammar
If my account of the history of generative grammar has appeared to be as much an
account of the history of philosophy in the early 20th century as an account of the history
of linguistics, that is to some degree correct. Indeed, one aspect of Chomsky’s early work
that has seen remarkably little commentary from historians of linguistics (with Tomalin’s
recent [2006] book Linguistics and the Formal Sciences being a notable exception) is the
fact that his earliest works were as much attempts to participate in contemporary
discussions in formal symbolic logic, philosophy, and the fledgling field of information
theory as they were geared at furthering discussions going on in the field of linguistics at
66
Conversely, Chomsky has, until recently, claimed that generative grammar is geared toward
uncovering real truths. Chomsky, for example, suggests in Language and Responsibility that “At
least in my opinion, it has always seemed evident that only the ‘realist’ interpretation of linguistic
theory, whether procedural or not, provides the basis for a significant discipline, one that is worth
pursuing.
Oenbring / 68
the time. (Indeed, it is for certain significant that Chomsky’s first full publication was in
The Journal of Symbolic Logic and that Chomsky’s first book-length manuscript was
entitled The Logical Structure of Linguistic Theory.) That is to say, in order to build
legitimacy for his theories regarding human syntax, Chomsky first had to find a way to
articulate his theories using the argumentative, discursive, and methodological means of
an audience willing to accept his theories. This was done before he could attempt to
reframe the disciplinary identity of the field where he would become — and for
approaching half a century would remain — its most influential theorist.
This is not to say that Chomsky went out his way to search for an audience
interested in his theories. Rather Chomsky’s work, like the work of all scholars, has been
deeply influenced by his own personal history and the intellectual climate of his
development as a scholar; Chomsky’s work developed out of a complex negotiation
between Chomsky as independent scholar/agent and his immediate scholarly
environment. Indeed, this element of the story of generative grammar is deeply entwined
with Chomsky’s personal history and the unique features of the intellectual scenes of
Philadelphia in the forties and Cambridge in the fifties. Nevertheless, Chomsky has a
long tradition of looking to other areas of scholarship in order to find disciplinary
conventions and grounds for his knowledge claims in order to shore up his claims in the
study of language proper; Chomsky has consistently looked outside the study of language
for grounding concepts and claims that he can use to undergird his claims in the area of
linguistics.
Oenbring / 69
Chomsky’s 1951 M.A. thesis The Morphophonemics of Modern Hebrew, oddly
merely a revision of his 1949 B.A. thesis, both written under Harris, is, for certain, an
interesting artifact from the perspective of intellectual history. From a rhetorical
perspective, Morphophonemics’ interest is less certain, seeing that it, like Chomsky’s
massive 1955 manuscript The Logical Structure of Linguistic Theory (LSLT), wasn’t
published until the 1970s. (That is to say, it is unclear what rhetorical effect any
unpublished text can have on an audience. [One should, however, remember that parts of
LSLT were available in mimeograph form well before its 1975 publication.]) An inwardlooking piece, Morphophonemics is clearly a product of Chomsky’s unique intellectual
experience. Morphophonemics, for example, lists only five sources. These are: Harris’
Methods; an article by famous anthropological and typological linguist Joseph Greenberg
(1950); an article by Hockett (1950) on the scientific status of linguists methods; a 1943
article “On the Simplicity of Ideas” by Nelson Goodman, the Penn-based analytic
philosopher who helped Chomsky secure a four year fellowship at Harvard (Goodman is
well-known for his advocacy for constructional systems, constructive nominalism,67 and
notions of economy); and even one of Chomsky’s own unpublished manuscripts.
Armed with only a master’s degree, Chomsky studied for four years at Harvard as
a member of the Society of Fellows between 1951 and 1955. With few restrictions on the
shape and boundaries of his work, Chomsky was free to make broad and novel
connections both in his scholarship and around Cambridge. At Harvard were several
67
Usually nominalism is contrasted with realism, with the former school of thought suggesting
that descriptions of nature do not correspond directly to reality and the latter suggesting that they
do. Constructive (or inscriptional ) nominalism suggests that the scholars is developing a
consciously artificial system of description that is nominalist in its claims.
Oenbring / 70
scholars that would play important roles in the development of generative grammar,
including: Eric Lenneberg and George Miller, both biologically-focused psychologists
with interests in linguistics, both of whom would play an important role in Chomsky’s
reception outside linguistics; W.V.O. Quine, a logician and analytic philosopher who
received Chomsky’s works generally in a cold manner (but whose famous piece “Two
Dogmas of Empiricism,” a critique of contemporary empiricism, has, nevertheless, been
rhetorically misconstrued by Chomsky and his followers as evidence for the existence of
a crisis in empiricist philosophy and, moreover, as support for the nascent rationalism in
Chomsky’s works68 [see, for example, Chomsky’s LSLT: 33]); Roman Jakobson, the
literary theorist and member of the biologically-focused Prague School of phonology;
and, finally, Morris Halle, Jakobson’s student who would later work with Chomsky in
developing the field of generative phonology. Nearby at MIT was logician and Carnapdisciple Yehoshua Bar-Hillel, a scholar that would both influence and provide
enthusiastic support for Chomsky’s work.69
In 1953 Chomsky’s first academic publication “Systems of Syntactic Analysis”
appeared in the Journal of Symbolic Logic. Following the work of Bar-Hillel, “Systems”
is, broadly stated, an attempt to apply formal symbolic systems of syntax like those being
That is to say, Quine’s critique of contemporary empiricism does not necessarily equate to
support for rationalism. For a quick overview of the distinctions between Quine and Chomsky’s
projects see (George [1986]). Also, see the assessment of Quine’s work by Chomsky and others,
with Quine’s responses, in the 1969 edited volume Words and Objections. Chomsky’s analysis
hinges mostly on his well-known arguments about language acquisition. In response to
Chomsky’s critique, Quine accuses Chomsky of straw manning his ideas. Specifically, Quine
suggests that “Chomsky’s remarks leave me with feelings at once of reassurance and frustration.
What I find reassuring is that he nowhere clearly disagrees with my position. What I find
frustrating is that he expresses disagreement with what he thinks to be my position.”
69
For a nice overview of the intellectual scene at Cambridge in the fifties and the author’s place
in it, see Bar-Hillel’s Language and Information.
68
Oenbring / 71
developed by analytic philosophers Quine, Goodman, and Carnap to natural human
languages. Directly connecting the goals of the paper to Goodman and Quine’s
constructive nominalism,70 Chomsky suggests that the goal of the paper is “to develop an
adequate notion of syntactic category within an inscriptional nominalistic framework”
(242).71 (Although “Systems of Syntactic Analysis” claims to be “an attempt to formalize
a certain part of the linguist’s generalized syntax language” (242), the boundaries
between formal syntax and syntax describing natural languages (i.e., syntax in the
linguist’s sense) are not clearly defined in the piece; Chomsky conflates syntax in the
linguist’s sense with the purely formal syntax of the logician.
Rhetorically timid, Chomsky’s “Systems” avoids grandiose claims, presenting
itself more as a development of post-Bloomfieldian linguistics rather than a movement
beyond post-Bloomfieldian linguists, largely by connecting its findings to Harris’ work.72
What’s more following many analytic philosophers, with “Systems” Chomsky begins
what would become an important tradition in Chomsky and his followers’ style of
writing: inaccessible and unexplained formalism. Consider the following extract from
“Systems”:
70
Basically constructive nominalism suggests all of the following commitments: a distaste for
abstractions (including those provided by set theory); a preference to break propositions up into
individual units; a belief that systems of symbolic logic can and should be built from the ground
up; and a belief that symbolic logic, although fabricated, offers more than tautology. For more see
Quine and Goodman’s “Steps Toward a Constructive Nominalism” and Goodman’s The
Structure of Appearance (especially 37-46).
71
Constructive nominalism was also an expressly stated goal of Harris’ project.
72
While Chomsky avoids critique of Harris’ work (after all, he still was Harris’ student) in
“Systems”, Bar-Hillel’s similarly-themed 1954 article in Language “Logical Syntax and
Semantics” isn’t afraid to both directly critique Harris’ project and to be much bolder in its
attempts to break down the boundaries between logical syntax and linguistic syntax. Bar-Hillel
suggests, for example, that “I think it is correct to say that the differences between the structural
linguist and the formal logician is one of stress and degree rather than kind” (235).
Oenbring / 72
(“Systems of Syntactic Analysis” 255)
By conflating the technical language of formal logic with linguistic analysis, Chomsky
makes his work inaccessible to those linguists not familiar with formal logic. What’s
more, by focusing largely on natural language, Chomsky makes his project uninteresting
to pure logicians. As this suggests, Chomsky even in his earliest work, was crafting a
unique set of methods — methods accessible only to a unique discourse community; that
is to say, he was forming a discipline.
In completion of the requirements of his Harvard fellowship, Chomsky in 1955
finalized a massive 752 page manuscript The Logical Structure of Linguistic Theory, a
chapter of which, “Transformational Analysis,” also served as his 1955 dissertation from
Penn. Also in 1955, Chomsky took up, with Halle’s help, a position in the Department of
Modern Languages and Research Laboratory of Electronics at the Massachusetts Institute
of Technology, the institution where he has remained his entire career — minus several
extended stays at other universities (most notably an appointment for several months in
the English department at UC Berkeley during the 1966-67 academic year). Now holding
the title Institute Professor Emeritus, Chomsky’s influence in the field of linguistics can,
at least in part, be tied his ability to institutionalize his vision of what the discipline can
and should be by having a prominent place in MIT’s Linguistics department from its
Oenbring / 73
beginning (i.e., he has overseen the development of a department at a well-funded and
prestigious university, remaining an important figure in the department for over half a
century).
Throughout his career, Chomsky has forged the identity of generative grammar in
a foundry of conflict and other early publications make this clear. While Chomsky had
used the appearance of rigor offered by formal and symbolic logic to undergird his
analysis of natural languages in “Systems of Syntactic Analysis,” a tradition that has
remained in his work to the present, Chomsky in later work directly criticizes formal
logic and syntax, their relevance in the study of human languages, and the usefulness of
their descriptions as a whole. (This skepticism toward logical syntax can, however, be
traced back to Harris.) Chomsky suggests, for example, in a 1955 article in Language
with an almost identical title to a piece by Bar-Hillel in the same journal a year earlier
“Logical Syntax and Semantics: Their Linguistic Relevance” that:
logical syntax and semantics provide no grounds for determining synonymy and
consequence relations. The only assistance that these disciplines offer to
linguistics is to point out that consequence is a relation between sentences, and
synonymy a relation between words, and that if we knew the results of linguistic
analysis before such analysis was undertaken, we could write down an immense
list of synonyms and valid inferences. The word ‘formal’ disguises this triviality.
Although in a previous article in The Journal of Symbolic Logic Chomsky sought to
conflate logical syntax with the syntax of natural languages, in “Their Linguistic
Oenbring / 74
Relevance” Chomsky now directly criticizes logical syntax for an audience of linguists in
the journal Language.
Given that by the 1960s he would openly make appeals to abstract mental entities
— something directly opposed to constructive nominalist ideals, Chomsky’s reasons for
framing his work as part of the tradition of constructive nominalist tradition in his earliest
work are unclear, other than as a rhetorical maneuver for the purposes of undergirding
and legitimating his program of research. However, Chomsky quit openly espousing
constructive nominalism by the end of the fifties. Indeed, some scholars have expressed
skepticism that Chomsky ever worked within a constructive nominalist framework.
Hiorath (1974) suggests, for example, that “the occurrence of the term ‘nominalistic’ here
did not reflect any mature belief in philosophical nominalism. To my knowledge in
Chomsky’s later writing there is no trace of nominalism” (37).73
It is an interesting fact that although Chomsky has made much of his name as a
scholar by his claims that the study of language should ultimately be grounded in appeals
to the existence of structures in the mind, several of Chomsky’s earliest works include
direct statements against such mentalist appeals. (Remember that anti-mentalism was an
important element of both post-Bloomfieldian linguistics and constructive nominalist
73
It is indeed interesting that although responses to the work of Quine, Goodman, and Carnap
form the backbone of Chomsky’s earliest publications, Chomsky’s references to these analytical
philosophers largely evaporate by the 1960s; by the 1960s Chomsky no longer required their
work to undergird his own line of inquiry as generative grammar was becoming its own
discipline. Indeed, in his most important methodological text of the 60s, Aspects of the Theory of
Syntax, Chomsky cites only Quine’s Word and Object. Similarly, in his two most important
methodological texts after the 60s, Lectures on Government and Binding and The Minimalist
Program, the central propositions of the latter dealing with notions of economy, a notion
promoted by Goodman, Chomsky cites only Goodman peripherally in Lectures and cites none of
Quine, Goodman, and Carnap in The Minimalist Program.73
Oenbring / 75
philosophy.) Chomsky, for example, suggests in “Their Linguistic Relevance” that “if a
linguist has qualms about establishing or using somehow the fact that oculist and eyedoctor are synonyms, he can avoid all fear of mentalism by the formal procedure of
setting down this fact as a meaning postulate” (38).74 As is clear in this statement,
Chomsky, following the state of scholarship at the time, presents mentalism as something
to avoid (read: error). Steinberg (1999) finds other similar statements in Chomsky’s early
manuscripts and publications, mostly focused in The Logical Structure of Linguistic
Theory (and less clearly in Syntactic Structures). Whether Chomsky’s anti-mentalist
statements in the fifties were perfunctory given the state of post-Bloomfieldian linguistics
or wholehearted, we will never know, but Chomsky’s reluctance to immediately come
out of the closet as a mentalist in the 1950s demonstrates at bare minimum rhetorical
awareness.
The Syntactic Structures Period
The publication of Chomsky’s 1957 book Syntactic Structures is, for certain, the
most romanticized moment in the history of generative grammar, and, indeed, the history
of linguistics as whole. That is to say, many accounts of the so-called Chomskyan
revolution locate the revolution in the publication of Syntactic Structures. The first
sentence of Smith and Wilson’s popular-audience-focused Modern Linguistics: the
Results of Chomsky’s Revolution is typical in its matter-of-factness and its hyperbole:
“the publication of Noam Chomsky’s Syntactic Structures, in 1957, marked the start of a
74
Nevertheless, the if/then structure of this sentence suggests that Chomsky may be making
accommodations for linguists with such qualms, qualms that he doesn’t necessarily share.
Oenbring / 76
revolution in linguistics” (9). Such simplistic revolutionary historiography has become
common in many forums, including linguistics textbooks, popular-audience-focused
accounts like Smith and Wilson’s, respectable historical accounts aimed at academic
audiences like those produced by Newmeyer, and even a handful of videos aimed at K-12
students (see, for example, The Human Language Series).75
Although Harris makes many excellent points in his analyses of Chomsky’s
rhetoric in Syntactic Structures, several of these points which I directly rehash, Harris’
analyses seem — especially in his full-length article devoted to analyzing Syntactic
Structures, “Argumentation in Chomsky’s Syntactic Structures” — overly sympathetic
with Chomsky’s project. Despite his claims to the contrary, many of Harris’ analyses
lean toward “idolatry” (107) of Chomsky. For one, Harris falls into the trap, a trap that
is easy for a rhetorician of science (see, for example, John Angus Campbell’s work on
Darwin’s rhetoric [e.g., 1986]) of tying a text’s social efficacy (i.e., the effects it causes
in the world) to the brilliance of its prose.76 (This is not, however, to suggest that there is
no connection whatsoever.)
75
The subtitle of the first program in The Human Language Series, Discovering the Human
Language: Colorless Green Ideas, pays direct homage to perhaps the most over-romanticized
moment in Chomsky’s most over-romanticized book: the sentence Colorless green ideas sleep
furiously, an oft-repeated example sentence that Chomsky presents early in Syntactic Structures
in order to demonstrate that grammar is distinct from meaning (i.e., we can recognized the
sentence as grammatical despite being apparently meaningless). Colorless green ideas has
spawned the fawning of both linguist and non-linguist alike, and is often presented as evidence of
Chomsky’s genius (see, for example, [Barsky 92, figure 10]). However, Carnap presents a similar
example sentence early in The Logical Syntax of Language: Pirots karulize elatically (2), a
sentence that differs from Chomsky’s sentence only in that the words themselves, although
having morphology to indicate what part of speech they are, are meaningless.
76
Indeed, on several occasions in his work on Chomsky, Harris speaks of Chomsky’s genius of
exposition in Syntactic Structures. Harris, for example, suggests in “The Chomskyan Revolution
I: Syntax, Semantics, and Science” that “Syntactic Structures is, uncategorically, a masterpiece.
Oenbring / 77
Although Harris, for certain, offers a more nuanced perspective on Chomsky than
the master’s hagiographers, Harris, following Chomsky’s followers, oftentimes speaks of
the differences between Chomsky’s theories and the post-Bloomfieldians using simplistic
divisions and dichotomies received directly from Chomsky and his followers’ accounts
(e.g., Harris suggests the post-Bloomfieldians to have been afflicted by “naïve
positivism” [118] and at other points seems very close at points to suggesting that they
lacked a theory of syntax [“Argumentation” 123]). (Indeed, Chomsky has worked hard to
make sure that his account of the history of generative grammar is disseminated, and, as I
acknowledge earlier, it may be difficult for historians of linguistics to avoid Chomsky’s
dichotomies.)
Now that I have made it quite clear that my goal is not to heap more unnecessary
lavish praise upon Syntactic Structures, I must acknowledge that the text has had
remarkable and legitimate social effects upon the discipline of linguistics (or at least has
become a point of identity for an important school of linguistics). By reading Syntactic
Structures rhetorically, I am not claiming that the arguments and textual forms that I
analyze are totally unique to the piece. Indeed, an important feature of Chomsky’s
project has been his discipline in his rhetorical formulations; he has made the same points
over and over again for a certain period of time, in effect, distributing talking points for
his followers. Many of the most important issues raised by Syntactic Structures,
Chomsky had already raised a year earlier in an even more condensed format in an article
Lucid, convincing, syntactically daring, … it spoke directly to the imagination and ambitions of
the entire field” (49-50).
Oenbring / 78
“Three Models for the Description of Language” in IRE77 Transactions of Information
Theory.78 Why Syntactic Structures became more famous than “Three Models” we can
never know for certain (the journal “Three Models” was published in? pure historical
accident?). Nevertheless, Syntactic Structures, for certain, did cause a not insignificant
stir in both linguistics and in related fields at the time of its original publication, leading
to seven reviews within two years, including in journals in surrounding disciplines like
anthropology, with eight more reviews appearing in the following decade (Koerner and
Tajima 7).79
Released by a small publisher in the Netherlands, based off of reorganized lecture
notes, using examples only from English, and with the main body of the text totaling only
on the order of 100 pages, Syntactic Structures is an unlikely ‘revolutionary’ text. (Of
course, this little-book-that-could story has not escaped Chomsky’s hagiographers.) The
brevity of the text and the fact that it was based off of lecture notes is, however, of
interest from the standpoint of rhetoric; one might speculate that the text’s conciseness
and its original non-specialist audience may have played a role in the text’s reception.
From a rhetorical perspective, Syntactic Structures can, somewhat arbitrarily, be
broken up into six main sections and tasks. First of all, Chomsky attempts to demonstrate
the independence of syntax from questions of meaning (this is where the famous sentence
77
Note: I(nstitute) of R(adio) E(ngineers)
Also see Chomsky’s broadly-anthologized 1958 conference paper “A Transformational
Approach to Syntax.”
79
Several times in this study I turn to the number of reviews a publication spawned as a measure
of its effects. This is one of very few purely quantitative empirical measures available to a
historian of a discipline, requiring no reliance upon the oftentimes foggy memories of
participants. However, one should always keep in mind that when I present numbers of reviews I
do not claim that all reviews are exclusively positive or negative.
78
Oenbring / 79
Colorless green ideas sleep furiously comes from). Next Chomsky polemicizes against
Markov processes, a way of conceptualizing sentences that, under Chomsky’s reading, is
too limited. Then he engages in a similar argument against the limitations of finite phrase
structure rules, a way of representing strings of syntax that Chomsky had basically
developed himself. Next Chomsky introduces his own version of transformations as a
way to resolve some of these problems. After introducing transformations, Chomsky
begins a broader methodological conversation that, although indicating for sure that there
are implications to his findings, doesn’t claim directly any sort of epistemological
revolution (this is where Chomsky introduces a version of what eventually in generative
circles would become the dichotomy between discovery procedures and evaluation
procedures). Next Chomsky gives several examples of transformations, all based on the
English auxiliary verb system. Following the examples, Chomsky engages in another
reassessment of the implications of his findings, this time focused on what the methods of
syntactic analysis that he offers in the book can offer to analyses of meaning (meaning
being an always alluring notion). Finally, Chomsky ends the book with a brief summary
of the most important claims of the book, followed by appendices.
Although there are many explanations for what makes Syntactic Structures novel
(and, indeed, what made Chomsky’s work in this period as a whole novel), Newmeyer,
the generative linguist whose work on the history of generative grammar has become the
‘official’ history within the school, seems to hit the nail on the head by suggesting that
what distinguished Syntactic Structures is its promotion of a “formal, nonempiricist
Oenbring / 80
theory of a human attribute” (Newmeyer 1986: 18).80 Basically, a “formal, nonempiricist
theory of a human attribute” means this: that while Chomsky, like Harris, prefers (at least
in theory) precise formalism for describing human languages, he, unlike Harris, assumes
that the formalism are describing something that is both real and that is based in a human
capacity.81
As I have suggested before, one of Chomsky’s most frequent rhetorical strategies
is the clean dichotomy. Randy Harris similarly notes that:
One of Chomksy’s most consistent eristic techniques is the rhetoric of division.
His work — political, linguistic, and philosophical —is peppered with binary
divisions. One class of proposals or analyses is “totally irrational” (1981a:33) or
“near vacuous” (1981b:19) or “merits no comment among sane people”
(1987:81). Another class is “correct and useful” (1979: 181, obvious to the
“careful observer” (1988:59) or to anyone “whose concern is for insight and
understanding” (1965: 20). (119)
Of course, these examples that Harris presents are merely a small fraction of Chomsky’s
repertoire of binary divisions.
80
It is, indeed, interesting that I turn toward a Chomsky hagiographer for what I consider perhaps
the most definitive definition of Chomsky’s project in Syntactic Structures. One may see this as
evidence for how well Chomsky and his followers have controlled the message. That is to say, I
still am defining Syntactic Structures based on their terms.
81
However, Newmeyer also seems to read several of features of Chomsky’s project that he had
not yet explicitly promoted back onto Syntactic Structures (e.g., the notion of creativity — which
is present in Syntactic Structures largely couched in the more mathematical distinction between
finite and infinite phrase structure — and Chomsky’s reframing of Saussure’s notion of langue as
the notion of competence (Newmeyer 1986: 19). (Indeed, Chomsky did not speak of Saussure’s
langue model in print until 1963.)
Oenbring / 81
Harris also notes the place that these clean dichotomies play in Syntactic
Structures (119). On the first page of the preface of Syntactic Structures, Chomsky
builds a divide between “precisely constructed models” and “obscure and intuition-bound
notions” (5). Later on, Chomsky distinguishes between a “theory of linguistic structure”
and a “manual of helpful procedures” (106). However, Harris also suggests that
Chomsky as a whole avoids unnecessarily provocative rhetoric in Syntactic Structures, a
suggestion that seems a bit off the mark. Specifically, Harris states that Chomsky avoids
“divisive rhetoric” and “establishes a team spirit” (119) That is to say, Harris seems to
understate the revolutionary ambitions of the study. Indeed, on the first page of the first
chapter of the main body of the text (i.e., just to limit our scope to that page), Chomsky
sets up important dichotomies between finite and infinite, grammatical and
ungrammatical — in addition to making the bold step of allowing appeals to intuitions of
grammaticality (13).
Like other places in his work, one of Chomsky’s most important rhetorical
techniques in Syntactic Structures is the straw man. After attempting to demonstrate the
autonomy of grammar in the first chapter, Chomsky quickly moves to polemicizing
against Markov processes, an idea lifted from the fledgling field of information theory,
specifically Shannon and Weaver’s highly technical The Mathematical Theory of
Communication, a text aimed more at engineers than linguists.82 Basically Chomsky’s
problem with Markov processes in Syntactic Structures is that the theory, at least in his
construal of it, cannot account for the near infinite number of grammatical sentences that
82
Indeed, Shannon himself at the time worked for Bell Telephone Laboratories.
Oenbring / 82
speakers of individual human languages can produce and recognize as well or poorlyformed. Chomsky suggests in the chapter “An Elementary Linguistic Theory,” that “it
seems quite clear that no theory of linguistic structure based exclusively on Markov
process models and the like will be able to explain or account for the ability of a speaker
of English to produce and understand new utterances, while he rejects other new
sequences as not belonging to the language” (23).
While the notion of Markov Processes had been picked up in Hockett’s 1955
book A Manual of Phonology, Markov processes were by no means a central theory to
the discipline of linguistics at the time.83 Indeed, although Hockett only mentions
“Markoff Processes” once as part of broad and vague methodological explication (i.e., in
his attempt to participate in a broader unification of scientific methods across multiple
disciplines [remember that Markov processes is an idea originating in information
theory]), Chomsky seems to read Markov Processes as one of the core concepts of
Hockett’s book. (It is, indeed, interesting that in his 1957 review of Hockett’s A Manual
of Phonology, Chomsky never uses the term Markov Process despite offering an
extensive critique of Hockett’s methods.)84
Chomsky’s next step in Syntactic Structures is to unveil — all while critiquing the
limitations of — phrase structure rules (which Chomsky presents as, nevertheless, a clear
improvement upon Markov processes); Chomsky conflates his own ideas regarding
83
Interestingly, however, probabilistic Markov models have seen a marked increase in their
prestige with the rise of computer-based corpus linguistics.
84
Furthermore, one is tempted to question how carefully Chomsky had read Hockett’s and
Shannon and Weaver’s texts, seeing that in Syntactic Structures he transliterates the name of the
Russian mathematician that Hockett and Shannon and Weaver spell “Markoff” as “Markov.”
Oenbring / 83
phrase structure — most clearly developed in his own as-of-yet-unpublished (yet still
referenced) Logical Structure of Linguistic Theory — with the post-Bloomfieldian
syntactic theory of immediate constituent analysis in order to demonstrate the limitations
of phrase structure rules (i.e., his rhetorically-created straw man theory) so that he can
introduce the concept of transformations as a resolution to the problems he finds in the
phrase structure model. While it is largely unclear who, if anyone, espouses the theory of
phrase structure he is critiquing, Chomsky tentatively connects in a footnote the model of
phrase structure he presents to Hardwood’s 1955 article in Language “Axiomatic
Syntax,” a brief piece that uses neither of the terms phrase structure rules nor immediate
constituent analysis.
Framing a theory in a way so that it follows in line with the unique problems one
finds in one’s own theories so that one can promote yet another theory, yet seemingly
placing the blame on other scholars, is, for certain, a straw man form of exposition.
Newmeyer, usually a staunch defender of Chomsky, similarly notes the strangeness of
Chomsky’s polemicizing against theories that no one really espoused. Avoiding
specifically suggesting this to be a strategic or rhetorical maneuver by Chomsky,
Newmeyer nevertheless notes that “Chomsky was in the peculiar position of having to
argue against two generative grammatical models — finite state grammars and phrase
structure grammars — which had very few outspoken adherents” (1986: 22).
As part of his introduction to the notion of phrase structure in this section of
Structures, Chomsky presents a first elegantly simple set of rules (see 13) and an example
Oenbring / 84
of a simple derivation (i.e., a list presenting the ordered steps involved in the
development of a string of syntax) (see 14).
(13) (i) Sentence → NP + VP
(ii) NP→ T + N
(iii) VP → Verb + NP
(iv) T → the
(v) N → man, ball, etc.
(vi) Verb → hit, took, etc.
(Syntactic Structures 26)
(14)
Sentence
NP + VP
(i) [rule number]
T + N+ VP
(ii)
T + N + Verb + NP
(iii)
the + N + Verb + NP
(iv)
the + man + Verb + NP
(v)
the + man + hit + NP
(vi)
the + man + hit + T + N
(ii)
the + man + hit + the + N
(iv)
the + man + hit + the + ball
(v)
(Syntactic Structures 27)
In addition to these elegantly simple rule sets and derivations, Chomsky at this point in
Syntactic Structures also presents a first simple and rudimentary tree diagram.
Oenbring / 85
Chomsky further develops his system of rewrite rules, turning quickly toward
critiquing the limitations of such phrase structure. Using examples exclusively from the
English auxiliary system (i.e., ‘helper’ verbs like have, be, and do), Chomsky suggests
that we can increase the elegance and the simplicity of the system by allowing items to
move from the positions in which they are placed by phrase structure rules. Chomsky
gives the following example of the derivation of a simple indicative mood, active voice
sentence in present perfect progressive,85 a sentence thus requiring a form of the verb to
be and a form of the verb to have:
(30) the + man + Verb + the + book
from (13i-v)
the + man + Aux + V + the + book
(28i)
the + man + Aux + read + the + book
(28ii)
the + man + C
+ have + en +
be + ing +
read + the
+book (28iii)
– we select the
elements C,
have + en,
and be + ing
the + man + S + have + en + be + ing + read + the + book
85
(29i)
Although I use terminology from traditional grammar for my explanation, Chomsky largely
avoids such terms.
Oenbring / 86
the + man + have + S # be + en + read + ing # the + book
(29ii) [*3]
# the # man # have + S # be + en + # read + ing # the # book #
(29iii)
The morphophonemic rules (19), etc. will convert the last line of this derivation
into:
(31) the man has been reading the book (Syntactic Structures 39-40)
The presence of the verb to be as an auxiliary verb in an active voice sentence indicates
that the sentence is progressive and necessitates the addition of an ing ending to the main
verb (e.g., he was running, she is dancing, I shall be walking). Similarly, the presence of
the verb to have as an auxiliary verb requires that the next verb, be it an auxiliary or a
main verb, must add past participle morphology (e.g, I had walked, she had been
running, he has run).
As these bits of morphology appear semantically related to the auxiliary verbs, the
system may appear to become more elegant by suggesting that these bits of morphology
are first placed next to their auxiliary verbs by the phrase structure rules (see rule 29i
above) and then move to the next element on the right (see rule 29ii).86 Chomsky
rationalizes the addition of such rules suggesting the existence of a deeper-than-surfacelevel formal unity to syntactic constructions by appeals to simplicity. Specifically,
Chomsky suggests that “we see that significant simplification is possible if we are
permitted to formulate rules of a more complex type” (41). Although these so-called
86
Newmeyer explains the affix-hopping analyses of Syntactic Structures in the following,
typically elegant, manner: “The Syntactic Structures analysis … treated the superficially
discontinuous auxiliary morphemes have … en and be … ing as unit constituents generated by
the phrase structure rules and posited a simple transformational rule to permute the affixal and
verbal elements to their surface positions, thus predicting the basic distribution of auxiliaries in
simple declarative sentences” (24).
Oenbring / 87
affix-hopping examples may seem overly elaborate, even byzantine, to some, they are for
certain some the most elegant specific analyses of specific constructions that Chomsky
has ever offered in print. Indeed, many have suggested the affix-hopping examples from
Syntactic Structures to be the most convincing examples Chomsky has ever presented in
print.87 I, for one, am not afraid to say that I find them somewhat alluring.
After extending his analysis of affix-hopping to include the formation of passive
voice,88 Chomsky gives a name to these new but different types of phrase structure rules
that he presents. He calls them grammatical transformations (44). While Chomsky does
cite Zellig Harris’ 1957 article in Language “Cooccurence and Transformations in
Linguistic Structure” deep in a footnote on the same page as he introduces his version of
transformations, Chomsky seems to overstate the novelty of his proposition; he seems to
take all the credit for the development of the notion of transformations. Specifically,
Chomsky suggests that “if we examine carefully the implications of these supplementary
rules, however, we see that they lead to an entirely new conception of linguistic structure.
Let us call each such rule a ‘grammatical transformation’” (44, emphasis added). One of
few bold novelty claims in the book, Chomsky directly suggests his version of
transformations to be something entirely new.
Newmeyer notes that “the ingenuity of [Chomsky’s affix-hopping] analysis probably did more
to win supporters for Chomsky than all of his metatheortical statements about discovery and
evaluation procedures and immediately led to some linguists proposing generativetransformational analyses of particular phenomena despite a lack of enthusiasm for the
foundations of the theory itself” (1980 [1986:24]).
88
Active voice: Sue hit the ball.
Passive voice: The ball was hit by Sue.
87
Oenbring / 88
Chomsky continues with a meta-methodological chapter titled “On the Goals of
Linguistic Theory.” In this chapter introduces an early version of what would become the
dichotomy between evaluation procedures and discovery procedures.89 Chomsky
suggests specifically that:
It is no doubt possible to give an organized account of many useful procedures of
analysis, but it is questionable whether these can be formulated rigorously,
exhaustively and simply enough to qualify as a practical and mechanical
discovery procedure. At any rate, this problem is not within the scope of our
investigations here. Our ultimate aim is provide an objective, non-intuitive way to
evaluate a grammar once presented, and to compare it with other proposed
grammars. (Syntactic Structures 56, emphasis added)
While Chomsky avoids using the term evaluation procedure directly in this quote, he
does use the term on the next page (57). This dichotomy became much clearer in later
historical accounts of Chomsky’s work.90
By discovery procedure, Chomsky means the rigorously applied methods for
analyzing a corpus promoted in the work of Harris and other post-Bloomfieldians. In
contrast, Chomsky suggests that linguists should “lower their aims” (57) to the
development of evaluation procedures; as all one can ever do is offer theories of
language and/or syntactic structures, in practice all one can ever do is evaluate theories of
89
Morphophonemics of Modern Hebrew speaks of the notion of discovery procedures, but it
hadn’t, of course, been published yet.
90
Indeed, Newmeyer (1980, 1986) draws the dichotomy clearly. The dichotomy is also drawn
clearly in a leading question the interview transcripts presented in 1979’s Language and
Responsibility (114) with Chomsky responding in turn.
Oenbring / 89
language and/or syntax, theories that are arrived at by “intuition, guess-work, all sorts of
partial methodological hints, reliance on past experience” (56). (It is indeed, interesting
that the term discovery procedure, a term that has become common for others to use
when describing Harris’ methods, a concept that Chomsky has used consistently to
distinguish between his methods and Harris’, was not, in fact, a term that Harris used, but
was in fact first published in Syntactic Structures. The fact that it has become difficult for
some to speak of Harris’ work without invoking the concept of discovery procedure [i.e.,
that Chomsky has defined discourse regarding Harris project] is also quite interesting.)
While Chomsky’s notion of a discovery procedure calls to mind propositions
made in Popper’s Logic of Scientific Discovery91 (specifically the notion of antiinductivism), never in the text does Chomsky actually cite Popper. Similarly, although
Chomsky does cite Goodman and Quine in Syntactic Structures, they do not form the
backbone of any of Chomsky’s core propositions. However, the findings of philosophers
of science, correctly or erroneously interpreted, have, nevertheless, played an important
role in Chomsky’s followers’ discourse surrounding Syntactic Structures; Chomsky’s
followers have used notions from philosophy of science in order to frame Syntactic
Structures as a text instigating and participating in a ‘scientific revolution’.92
Accordingly, Chomsky and his followers have routinely enlisted the support of
91
While the title of the English translation The Logic of Scientific Discovery certainly calls to
mind Chomsky’s “discovery procedures,” we should remember that the English translation did
not appear until 1959. The title of the original 1934 German version Logik der Forschung does
not suggest the notion of discovery, translating directly as “The Logic of Research.”
92
Harlow’s largely balanced account of the history of generative grammar “Evolution of
Transformational Grammar” in Koerner and Asher’s Concise History of the Language Sciences,
for example, suggests one of the central tenets of generative grammar to be its “hypotheticodeductive” methodology.
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philosophy of science (or at least the appearance of the support of philosophy of
science93) in order to build rhetorical wedges between their work and the work of the
post-Bloomfieldians.94
After a chapter providing more examples of transformations, all from the English
auxiliary transformation, Chomsky moves on to a discussion of the place of questions of
meaning in linguistic analyses in the chapter “Syntax and Semantics.” Although
Chomsky does work at the end of the study to make foggy the boundaries between syntax
and semantics, as a whole, Chomsky’s concerns at the end of the book seem to accord
with the state of the discipline at the time. Indeed, while Chomsky’s concluding summary
of many of the most important assertions of the text does leave the text ending with a
statement of novelty, the end of Syntactic Structures avoids bold proclamations of a
scientific revolution. Rather, at the end of Syntactic Structures Chomsky works to
reassert the text’s relevance within contemporary discussions in linguistics.
It was not long, however, before a bold proclamation of the revolutionary nature
of Syntactic Structures would appear in print. In fact, the first suggestion of the radically
new nature of Chomsky's work took place in a 1957 review of Syntactic Structures
written by one of Chomsky's very own graduate students, Robert Lees. Lees makes it
clear from the beginning of his infamously-glowing review that Chomsky’s “little book
on syntactic structure has much to say about the status of linguistics as a science” (375).
Recall that Chomsky and his followers invoke the support of Quine’s “Two Dogma’s of
Empiricism” as support for the nascent rationalism in Chomsky’s work.
94
Elsewhere, however, Chomsky does speak of Popper’s work as support for the notion of
evaluation procedures (see, for example, 1964: 98]).
93
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Attempting to build a wedge between Chomsky’s work and the post-Bloomfieldians,
Lees suggests that:
Chomsky’s book on syntactic structures is one of the first serious attempts on the
part of the linguists to construct within the tradition of scientific theoryconstruction a comprehensive theory of language which may be understood in the
same sense that a chemical, biological theory is ordinarily understood by experts
in those fields. It is not a mere reorganization of the data into a new kind of
library catalogue, nor another speculative philosophy about the nature of Man and
Language, but rather a rigorous explication of our intuitions about our language in
terms of an overt axiom system, the theorems derivable from it, explicit results
which may be compared with new data and other intuitions, all based plainly on
an overt theory of the internal structure of language (377)
The loaded nature of this language hardly needs to be pointed out. Lees hyperbolically
suggests Chomsky’s work to constitute the “first serious attempt” to build a theory of
language “within the tradition of scientific theory-construction.” (Indeed, Randy Harris,
like others, has called Lees ‘Chomsky’s Huxley’ [171]). Invoking the stamp-collector
aspersion often used in debates between different would-be groups of scientists,95 Lees
takes a direct shot at those linguists who believe that their task is to describe languages in
an empirically scrupulous way, suggesting Chomsky’s work (unlike theirs) consists of
more than “a mere reorganization of the data into a kind of library catalogue.”
See, for example, Ceccarelli’s chronicle of the debates between naturalists and geneticists in
Shaping Science with Rhetoric (18).
95
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Since Bloomfield’s “A Set of Postulates,” many American linguists had been
envious of explicitly formulated axiomatic systems. While metatheorizing about
axiomatic systems does not play a substantial role in Chomsky’s book, Lees seems to
read this element into Syntactic Structures; he takes Chomsky’s phrase structure rules as
themselves precisely-formed theories of language: axioms that can be supported by
empirical evidence or discarded. Hence, Lees suggests that Chomsky’s system allows for
a “rigorous explication of our intuitions about our language in terms of an overt axiom
system, the theorems derivable from it, explicit results which may be compared with new
data.”
As I have suggested, whether or not Chomsky actually espoused mentalist beliefs
in the 1950s, he was reticent, given the state of the discipline of linguistics, to
immediately come out of the closet as a mentalist (he and his followers have,
nevertheless, routinely read the mentalism of the sixties back onto his work of the
fifties).96 Similarly, while Chomsky isn’t afraid to bring to the front in Syntactic
Structures some of what would become the important distinguishing features of the
program of generative grammar, he avoids extensive explanation of the more contentious
methodological issues separating his work from the post-Bloomfieldians. Lees’ review,
however, faces many of the most contentious methods undergirding generative grammar
head on (e.g., appeals to intuition). This elaborate unveiling procedure has been labeled
by some as a “good-cop-bad-cop ploy” (see Harris 1994). Chomsky played the role of
Chomsky suggests in the introduction to LSLT that “in LSLT the ‘psychological analogue’ to
the methodological of constructing linguistic theories is not discussed, but it lay in the immediate
background of my own thinking. To raise the issue seemed to me, at the time, too audacious”
(LSLT 35).
96
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Darwin-Master, and Lees played the role of Huxley-Bulldog. And they both played their
roles well.
Rhetoric and the Beginnings of Disciplinary Formation
As I am beginning to demonstrate, despite his hagiography (e.g., Lyons’, Otero’s,
Newmeyer’s, and Barsky’s accounts), Chomsky did not come down from the mountains
á là Nietzsche’s Zarathustra and begin making his bold proclamations about syntax, the
nature of language, and biology. Rather, he, like all successful academic rhetors, has had
to negotiate the prevailing regimes of knowledge in order to build space for his research
program. As I have demonstrated, at the beginnings of generative grammar, Chomsky
looked outside linguistics proper to formal symbolic logic for a set of methods to ground
his concerns in the study of language; early in the development of generative grammar,
Chomsky looked to formal symbolic logic for footholds in practical methods, methods
that when applied to the study of human language proper led to the formation of a protean
distinct intellectual community: a distinct discipline. That is to say, Chomsky worked to
craft distinct formal methods for the study of syntax before he engaged in his later, bolder
attempts to shift the disciplinary identity of linguistics. (Indeed, compared to the
byzantine constructions common in later generative grammar the analyses in early works
such as Syntactic Structures look quite quaint.)
Oenbring / 94
What’s more, by claiming the banner of notions (like formalism and rigor 97)
lifted from formal symbolic logic bearing scientific cachet during the mid-20th century,
Chomsky was attempting to build the scientific ethos of the new tradition of scholarship
he was developing. (Recall Chomsky’s largely bogus claims to be working within the
constructive nominalist tradition.98)
As I have shown in this chapter, several of the most important binaries that have
been in contention in battles over the identity of scientific linguistics (e.g., mentalism vs.
anti-mentalism, and empiricism vs. intuitionism and/or rationalism), actually predate
Chomsky’s work. Chomsky’s work has been ‘revolutionary’ in that he successfully
flipped these pre-existing binaries, moving, as I will show, the identity of ‘scientific’
linguistics from anti-mentalism to mentalism and from empiricism to intuitionism and
rationalism. Early in the formation of generative grammar, this identity work was done
not by Chomsky himself, but by his bulldogs like Lees. Nonetheless, as early as
Syntactic Structures Chomsky offered his own identity binaries (e.g., the dichotomy
between discovery procedure and evaluation procedure), identity binaries that have been
invoked persistently by his followers to define Chomsky’s project as science and other
linguistics as non-science. (The flipping of these binaries does, however, little to
Formalism and rigor are, I argue, what rhetorician Burke calls god-terms (see Burke’s The
Rhetoric of Religion): vaguely-defined, grand notions that to which others are expected to pay
deference (e.g., freedom).
98
Playing on linguists’ science envy of other fields is, however, a technique that Chomsky and
his followers continue to use to this day. Indeed, Chomsky has routinely defined generative
grammar through appeals to psychology and biology (Chomsky has famously argued that
linguistics should properly be viewed as branch of cognitive psychology), despite the fact that he
has often disparaged the psychological establishment and has rarely, if ever, incorporated genuine
data from psychology and biology.
97
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nothing, I argue, to change the accuracy or value of linguists’ analyses of human
languages.)
As I have shown in this chapter, Chomsky has done much to define his theories of
in opposition to other theories of human language (most often the post-Bloomfieldians
and in particular his mentor Zellig Harris). In practice, one of Chomsky’s most common
methods is to set up others work in a way so that others’ methods seem uninspired, dull,
homogenous, and in error: Chomsky and his followers practice straw man argumentation.
Recall Chomsky’s skewering of phrase structure rules and Markov processes in Syntactic
Structures.
As I hope to have shown, the young Chomsky, while for certain bold and
innovative, had to display deference to established regimes of knowledge much more
than we will see in the later Chomsky; the young Chomsky was certainly more cautious
and less willing to make claims based on his authority (which is understandable seeing
that he didn’t have authority yet) than we will see in Chomsky the pan-academic Master.
Indeed, the most confrontational and boldest rhetorical maneuvers that Chomsky and his
followers engaged in their coup and subsequent sub-revolutions in linguistic theory have
yet to come in our story; the foundry of conflict in which Chomsky and his followers
forged the identity of generative grammar, and by extension later ‘scientific’ linguistics,
is still, in our story, heating up.
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Chapter 3: Rhetorical Revolutions and Disciplinary Identity: From Current Issues
to Principles and Parameters
Introduction
As I have argued, although Chomsky’s work in the Syntactic Structures period
was quite different from the post-Bloomfieldian establishment, and was very creative, it
did not attack the core of the disciplinary identity of linguistics at the time; Chomsky had
in the 1950s not yet attempted to craft a unique disciplinary identity for generative
grammar and linguistics as a whole.99 Nor did Chomsky and his followers engage in the
fifties in extensive boundary work: critiquing other programs of scholarship, attempting
to write these other programs as outside of the bounds of ‘scientific’ linguistics.
Since establishing his methodological foothold in the 1950s, Chomsky’s
scholarship has, I argue, been as much about managing how the field of linguistics as a
whole thinks about itself than it has been about promoting novel methods for analyzing
language. Indeed, since the mid-sixties Chomsky has left the most important and unique
methodological assumptions of generative grammar largely unchanged: that the possible
syntactic constructions of human languages are highly constrained by the human genetic
99
The fact that Chomsky avoided articulating some of the boldest elements of the program of
generative grammar in early days has not escaped the attention of historians of linguistics.
Newmeyer, for example, has suggested that Chomsky avoided openly speaking of the patterns he
was uncovering as universals (i.e., something encoded by the potentials of biology) in the early
days of generative grammar in order to avoid drawing the ire of the post-Bloomfieldians.
Newmeyer notes that:
While [Chomsky] left no room for doubt in [Syntactic Structures] that the general form of
linguistics rules and the vocabulary of the theory itself were universal, he was not
actually to use the term 'universal' until around 1962. One can only speculate that the
atmosphere of the 1950s, suspicious of any but 'inductive' generalizations, made him
discrete enough to avoid that emotionally charged term. (1986: 72)
Oenbring / 97
endowment; that the linguist’s task is to develop a set of formal axioms that would
predict the well-formed syntactic constructions of human languages; and that inquiry can
and should rely primarily upon native speakers’ intuitions of well-formedness for
evidence. That is to say, the various changes in the model of generative grammar that
Chomsky has promoted since the original revolution have been more changes in the
rhetorical framework used to legitimate the program to the linguistic and broader
academic community than substantive changes in core methodological commitments.
(Nonetheless, Chomsky and his followers have done their best to frame each of the
changes to the model of generative grammar that Chomsky has supported as deeply
profound and insightful.)
Another way to say this is that Chomsky’s primary target has, since the 1960s,
been more the disciplinary identity of linguistics rather than the actual method used by
linguists in their descriptions of languages. These shifts in disciplinary identity have been
important to Chomsky in that they have allowed him to frame the various programs he
has supported as distinct from (and mutually exclusive of) the programs of other groups
of scholars. Accordingly, by controlling the core claims and organizing theses of
linguistic inquiry, Chomsky has been able to write his opponents out of the current
research paradigm all while reinforcing his own authority. Chomsky’s prerogative to
move the field according to his intuitions has been supported by the revolutionary
ideology of the field of generative grammar — the field’s self-understanding being
caught up with the fact that it triumphed over the bankrupt ancien régime of behaviorist
Oenbring / 98
post-Bloomfieldians — with Chomsky, himself the most famous radical public
intellectual of the past few decades, playing the role of Comandante.
Accordingly, in this chapter I analyze specifically how Chomsky has rhetorically
constructed both the original revolution in the disciplinary identity of linguistics and how
he constructed his subsequent sub-revolutions; in this chapter I analyze the specific
rhetorical maneuvers that Chomsky and his followers have engaged in order to catalyze
the original mid-sixties shift in identity of linguistics and the subsequent sub-revolutions
he has led the field through, following Chomsky to the Aspects Program (a.k.a. the
‘standard theory’) of the late mid to late sixties, to the Extended Standard Theory of the
seventies, to the Principles and Parameters approach of the eighties. (Recall that my
goal in this study is to uncover general principles in Chomksy’s rhetoric by surveying the
strategies he has used over the course of his career.) As I demonstrate in this chapter,
starting with his original shift in the disciplinary identity of linguistics in the mid-sixties,
Chomsky has become increasingly bold in moving the field according to his own
intuitions; he has become increasingly confident to play his revolution cards.
The Rhetoric of Mentalism and Disciplinary Identity
As I have noted, Chomsky in the fifties largely avoided most of what would be
the boldest claims of the program of generative grammar. Early in the sixties, however,
this began to change. For one, Chomsky began openly to espouse linguistic
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mentalism100: the idea that the study of language tells us something about the inner
workings of the mind and that scholarship can and should be grounded in appeals to
existence of these structures in the mind. That is to say, Chomsky began to articulate
clear large-picture methodological assumptions for the program of generative grammar
distinctly opposed to the ruling post-Bloomfieldian establishment. In engaging in these
moves Chomsky partook in rhetorical world creation: the attempt to authorize a field of
study as a distinct and uniquely valuable mode of inquiry by reference to large-scale
methodological and philosophical issues.
Chomsky’s 1964 book Current Issues in Linguistic Theory, a text that began its
life as Chomsky’s plenary speech at the Ninth International Congress of Linguists in
1962 entitled “The Logical Basis of Linguistic Theory”101 demonstrates these world
creation appeals nicely.102 Although much of the text is technical and specific in focus,
Chomsky devotes much of the early pages of the text to large scale methodological
issues. As he does in several of his most important texts of the 1960s, including 1965’s
Aspects of the Theory of Syntax, the text usually understood as the foundational document
of mid-sixties generative methodology, Chomsky devotes much of the early pages of
Current Issues to articulating the large picture philosophical and methodological issues
However, Chomsky avoided specifically using the term mentalism until 1965’s Aspects of the
Theory of Syntax.
101
Although “The Logical Basis” has been published independently, for the purposes of
simplicity I take my examples exclusively from Current Issues.
102
While interpretations range regarding whether Chomsky’s being offered a plenary speech at
the 1962 conference (when he was only thirty-three years old) was merely historical coincidence
or part of an engineered palace coup with Harris’ help, it is clear that he used the moment in a
rhetorically astute manner.
100
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undergirding generative grammar as a body of scholarship. That is to say, he was
attempting to articulate a new mentalist disciplinary identity for linguistic scholarship.
Consider the following passage from the first page of the first chapter of Current
Issues, “Goals of Linguistic Theory”:
The central fact to which any significant linguistic theory must address itself is
this: a mature speaker can produce a new sentence of his language on the
appropriate occasion, and other speakers can understand it immediately, though it
is equally new to them. Most of our linguistic experience, both as speakers and
hearers, is with new sentences; once we have mastered a language the class of
sentences which we can operate fluently and without difficulty or hesitation is so
vast that for all practical purposes (and, obviously, for all theoretical purposes),
we may regard them as infinite. (7)
In this passage Chomsky articulates the stakes clearly. A “significant linguistic theory”
must be able to account for our unique ability to make creative utterances and our ability
to distinguish between well-formed and poorly formed sentences — abilities that are
ultimately the product of human biology. Chomsky has over the years made accounting
for what he has called the creative aspect of language (8), an ability that is grounded in
human biology, a central element of the disciplinary identity of generative grammar. 103
103
While Prague school phonological theorists (a group largely opposed to the postBloomfieldians) clearly expressed an interest in both notions of universals and seeing language
as constrained by human nature well before Chomsky’s ‘revolutionary’ mentalism (see, for
example, Jakobson’s Child Language, Aphasia, and Phonological Universals and Jakobson and
Halle’s Fundamentals of Language), Chomsky only infrequently connect his interest in universals
to the Prague school in his 1960s work. Instead, Chomsky traces Western interest in notions of
language universals back to pre-Bloomfieldian precursors. Chomsky’s rhetorical purpose in
invoking these pre-Bloomfieldian precursors is clear: to craft a clear and distinct disciplinary
Oenbring / 101
Since Bloomfield, many American linguists had authorized linguistics as an
autonomous field of study on the basis of its focus on a disembodied structured system of
relationships. By espousing mentalist beliefs, Chomsky was directly attacking the then
established disciplinary identity of linguistics: to describe human languages without
positing the existence of structures in the mind.104
Furthermore, by setting up two of the
post-Bloomfieldians’ core notions constituting their disciplinary identity (specifically,
anti-mentalism and empiricism) as much more radical and problematic commitments than
they really were in the day-to-day work of the post-Bloomfieldians linguists (i.e., by
straw manning the post-Bloomfieldians), Chomsky could collapse the established
disciplinary identity and core assumptions of linguistics and build his own system of
order in its place (something which, of course, didn’t happen overnight). What’s more, by
foregrounding the (somewhat trivial) fact of the biological nature of human language, and
making the obviously alluring claim that linguistics could now provide true insight into
the architecture of the human mind, Chomsky’s theories and his name could become a
rallying point for a whole generation of linguists desiring to participate in a scientific
revolution.
Of course, it is impossible to put an exact date on when Chomsky and his
followers finally stormed the Bastille and took over the reins of power within the field.
identity for generative linguistics, and by extension linguistics as a whole. That is to say, he was
building the appearance that generative grammar was something totally distinct from traditional
mainstream post-Bloomfieldian linguistics.
104
This is not, of course, to say that Chomsky was the first linguist to focus on the biological
foundations of human language. Jakobson and Halle certainly both looked to biology to ground
their theories, but their domain of focus was largely phonology and not the more provocative
realms of syntax and semantics that Chomsky entered into.
Oenbring / 102
Nonetheless, the publication of Current Issues seems as good of a landmark as any other
one might propose. While the community of generative grammarians at the time was still
located mostly in Cambridge, 105 Current Issues marks a shift in Chomsky’s governing
rhetorical strategies; we can say that in Current Issues Chomsky moves from playing by
the post-Bloomfieldians’ rules to being the referee of the game (in addition to an all star
player). Indeed, the mentalist ideology first presented in Current Issues remains a core
claim in generative grammar up to the present. 106
Early Generative Phonology and Boundary Work
As several historians of linguistics have suggested, the post-Bloomfieldians did
not respond strongly to Chomsky’s propositions in the Syntactic Structures period
because Chomsky had not yet attacked the post-Bloomfieldian’s core theory constituting
their disciplinary identity (that being phonology). When Chomsky did attack postBloomfieldian phonology, the earlier generation did react strongly. (The most famous
example of this is Householder [1965]. Also see Chomsky and Halle’s reply [1965].)
Newmeyer notes that:
Newmeyer estimates that in 1965, “the faculty and students at MIT … made up at least 90% of
the transformational grammarians in the world at the time” (1986: 82).
106
Indeed, while it is debatable whether generative grammar, even after decades of work, has
provided genuine insight into the architecture of the human mind that other ways of studying
syntax have not, Chomsky has, nevertheless, done an unquestionably good job of attaching
mentalism to the disciplinary identity, the brand, of generative grammar, an identity that has
spread throughout the discipline of linguistics. It seems to matter little whether there is
convincing evidence or not that generative grammar’s mode of inquiry actually has provided
access to structures in the mind; what is more important is generative grammarians continued
belief that what they are describing is actually something real.
105
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a reason that the post-Bloomfiedian rebuttal was delayed comes from the fact that
the generativists turned their full attention to phonology only several years after
the publication of Syntactic Structures. Since the post-Bloomfieldians never had
much to say about syntax, they felt no immediate threat from a new approach to
that aspect of grammar. But they reacted with horror to Halle’s and Chomsky’s
assaults on their approach to phonology. (Newmeyer 39)
While Newmeyer is correct to suggest that the phonology was a more central concern to
the post-Bloomfieldians than syntax ever was, he is being somewhat disingenuous to
suggest that the earlier school “never had much to say about syntax” (cf. Anderson
[316]).107 Nevertheless, Chomsky and his followers (most notably Halle) did in the
sixties promote what they claimed to be a distinct brand of phonology, a program that
appears to be largely antithetical to post-Bloomfieldian theories: generative phonology.
Although Chomsky did not flesh out all of the boldest implications of his new
generative phonology until his 1968 book with Halle The Sound Pattern of English, his
first publication to tackle issues of phonology came much earlier than that. In fact,
Chomsky’s first foray into the field of phonology was a 1956 joint publication with Halle
and Lukoff in a festschrift For Roman Jakobson “On Accent and Juncture in English.”
Broadly stated, the goal of “On Accent and Juncture” is to reduce the vocabulary for
marking stress down to a simple accented-unaccented binary of marking (65). In its focus
107
That is to say, it is in his best interest as a generative grammarian to suggest syntax to be
something uniquely Chomskyan (thereby authorizing the exclusion of post-Bloomfieldian
linguistics as it is trivial and limited). Indeed, post-Bloomfiedians such as Fries had given
substantial treatment of syntax well before Chomsky (see, for example, Fries [1952]).
Oenbring / 104
on reducing the linguist’s methodological apparatus to the smallest toolkit possible, “On
Accent and Juncture” reflects concerns that would occupy Chomsky throughout his
career, a concern borrowed from the Prague school linguists like Jakobson. (As Anderson
notes “both universals and explanatory principles were considered by American
structuralists to be either non-existent or beyond the scope of possible research … This
was directly contrary to European practice — which was generally stigmatized in
America as vague and impressionistic” [324].)
Although Newmeyer reads “On Accent and Juncture” as a bullet through the
heart of the post-Bloomfieldian proscription against mixing levels108 (33), the tone of
“On Accent” is not particularly polemical; Newmeyer reads more of Chomsky’s mature
generative phonology into the piece than is actually present. (As I have suggested, the
clean break is an important element of Chomsky and his follower’s revolutionary
historiography of generative grammar.) Despite the obvious influence of the Prague
school, “On Accent and Juncture” presents itself as a development of post-Bloomfieldian
phonology rather than a movement beyond it (see, for example, [65]).109
Chomsky’s first solo publication in which he deals substantially with issues of
phonology is Current Issues. One of the primary rhetorical functions of Current Issues is
108
Recall that I have suggested that Chomsky and Newmeyer have placed emphasis on the postBloomfieldian proscription against mixing levels largely as a technique to tell a coherent story of
an empistemological rupture. Newmeyer’s emphasis in (1980 [1986]) on the place of the biuniqueness condition in post-Bloomfieldian phonology also comes directly from Chomsky (see,
for example, [1964: 80-81).
109
In later work, however, generativists would make it clear that their new phonology was part of
a new program totally distinct from post-Bloomfieldian phonology. Halle’s 1962 article
“Phonology in Generative Grammar” makes it clear by its very title that generative grammar has
clear implications for the study of phonology; he makes it clear that there is a new phonology that
accompanies the program of generative grammar.
Oenbring / 105
to draw a neat dividing line between generative grammar and post-Bloomfieldian
linguistics. Early in the work, for example, Chomsky neatly divides between “the
taxonomic model — which is an outgrowth of modern structuralist linguistics” (11) and
generative grammar, which he associates with tradition (specifically, interestingly,
traditional grammar).
Speaking at length regarding phonology in two separate sections in the study,
Chomsky’s first run through in the chapter “Levels of Success for Grammatical
Description” uses a simple example to demonstrate that an explicitly formulated theory of
linguistic structure is much more interesting than an accurate account of empirical facts
in and of itself. In “Levels” Chomsky first formulates his famous divide between three
levels of adequacy, a schema that would later be used to drive a wedge between his
theories the work of the post-Bloomfieldians. These levels are: observational adequacy
(accounting for the ‘raw facts’ of language in a corpus), descriptive adequacy (having a
model that accurately describes native speakers’ intuitions of the well-formedness), and
explanatory adequacy (having a model that can account for and provide an explanation
for native speakers’ intuitions of well-formedness).
Associating the post-Bloomfieldians with the level of observational adequacy
(29), Chomsky’s uses the example of accidental gaps in the lexicon to develop the
schema. Chomsky explains:
A few linguistic examples may help to clarify the distinction between these
various levels of adequacy. Consider first the case of so-called “accidental gaps”
in the lexicon. Thus in English there is a word “pick” /pik/, but no /blick/ or /ftik/.
Oenbring / 106
The level of observational adequacy would be attained by a grammar that
contained the rule N → /pik/, but no lexical rule introducing /blik/ or /flik/. To
attain the level of descriptive adequacy, a grammar would have to provide, in
addition, a general rule that sets up a specific barrier against /ftik/, but not against
/blik/ (which would thus qualify as an accidental gap, a phonologically
permissible nonsense syllable). This level would be achieved by a grammar that
contained the generalization that in initial position before a true consonant (a
segment which is consonantal and non-vocalic, in terms of Jakobson’s distinctive
features), a consonant is necessarily /s/. The level of explanatory adequacy would
be attained by a linguistic theory that provides a principled reason for
incorporating this generalization in a grammar of English and for excluding (the
factually correct) “rule” that in the context #b-ik a liquid is necessarily /r/. (3031).
The crux of Chomsky’s argument here has to do with the distribution of /blik/ and /ftik/
in English. Although neither /blik/ nor /ftik/ exists in English, we, as native speakers,
know intuitively that the former, unlike the latter, it is phonologically possible in English.
We can account for the fact that /ftik/ is impossible with a simple rule: “that in initial
position before a true consonant (a segment which is consonantal and non-vocalic, in
terms of Jakobson’s distinctive features), a consonant is necessarily /s/.” (/stik/ is
acceptable, but /ftik/ isn’t.) However, a similar rule for /blik/ “that in the context #b-ik a
liquid is necessarily /r/” would go against our intuitions of possible English phonological
Oenbring / 107
patterns (i.e., we know intuitively as speakers of English that although /brik/ actually
exists in English and /blik/ does not, /blik/ would still be acceptable phonologically).
In this simple example, Chomsky makes a convincing case that an explanatory
rule that offers a theory of language focusing on general principles (e.g., the levels of
descriptive adequacy and explanatory adequacy) is more interesting, and, indeed, useful
than the mere empirical facts of language (observational adequacy) (i.e., an empiricallyfocused account would not be able to distinguish between /blik/ and /ftik/ because neither
occur in corpora of English). Rhetorically, the function of the levels of adequacy schema
— a function to which Chomsky later frequently put the schema to use — is to authorize
the search for abstractly formulated principles with the linguist relying upon appeals to
intuition, rather than a corpus, for evidence.
While Chomsky’s first run through of issues of phonology in Current Issues is
short and says relatively little about the bases of post-Bloomfieldian phonology (its
rhetorical purpose being to provide evidence for Chomsky’s different levels of adequacy
model — which Chomsky then applies to an analysis of syntax), Chomsky, however,
returns to phonology in the latter pages of Current Issues in the chapter “The Nature of
Structural Descriptions,” this time engaging in an extended dissection of the bases of
post-Bloomfieldian phonology; later in the study, Chomsky offers an extended critical
analysis of what he takes to be the most important elements of post-Bloomfieldian
phonology, and by extension the entire program of post-Bloomfieldian linguistics.
Like elsewhere, the dominant rhetorical technique Chomsky deploys in his
analysis of post-Bloomfieldian phonology is straw man argumentation; Chomsky sets up
Oenbring / 108
post-Bloomfieldian phonological theories in such a way that it can easily be framed as
unenlightening. Chomsky starts off analyzing a set of theories that he refers to as
systematic phonemics, a group of theories he associates with Bloomfield’s work despite
conceding that what he is picking apart is largely an idealization. Chomsky states that
“systematic phonemics seems to be, in essence, the phonemics of Bloomfield’s practice
(1933) (in particular, when his secondary phonemes are not represented), though it is
difficult to say whether it is in accord with his phonological theory, which is hardly a
model of clarity” (69). Chomsky later rebrands his object of assault taxonomic
phonemics. Reaffirming that what he is critiquing is largely a straw man, Chomsky notes
that: “abstracting away from much variation, let us coin the term ‘taxonomic phonemics’
to refer to this body of doctrine, thus emphasizing its striking reliance, in almost all
version, on procedures of segmentation and classification (identification of variants)”
(75). As this quote suggests, Chomsky frames the post-Bloomfieldians procedures as
mechanical and unenlightening: taxonomic.
Taxonomic phonemics, clearly meant to be a pejorative term, is not, however, the
only negative label designed to create a straw man that Chomsky applies to postBloomfieldian methodology. In fact, of the five pillars of post-Bloomfieldian phonemics
that Chomsky speaks of (linearity, invariance, biuniqueness, and local determinacy), only
one of them appears to have been used in post-Bloomfieldian work, with the rest being
terms coined by Chomsky.110
110
Derwing notes that:
Though he admits that ‘modern phonologists have not achieved anything like unanimity’,
he insists that a ‘body of doctrine has emerged to all or part of which a great many
Oenbring / 109
With post-Bloomfieldian empirically-focused phonology apparently refuted,
Chomsky makes it clear that the only way out of the methodological conundrum is to
make a turn toward a more abstract phonological system. Chomsky suggests that “for the
present, it seems that the most promising way to give a closer specification of this level
of representation and the criteria that determine it is by refining the abstract conditions on
the form of generative grammar, the measure of evaluation and the universal features that
define the phonetic matrices in terms of which the primary data is represented” (96). As
post-Bloomfieldian phonology is unenlightening, what is needed is bold universalizing
system, a system that, for the moment, will have to be abstract. Notice that Chomsky
invokes the notion of measure of evaluation (recall evaluation procedures) as support for
his claim. The notion of measure of evaluation became a key notion undergirding
generative phonology. As we cannot study all features in all languages at once, and not
all relevant features of language are available in corpora, we have to assess phonological
theories based on their seeming elegance based on limited evidence, all while allowing
appeals to intuition. While Chomsky does not flesh out or offer such a system in Current
Isssues, he, nevertheless, creates a space and need for such a system, a system that would
be expressed in his (in)famous 1968 book with Halle The Sound Pattern of English.
[structural] linguists would subscribe’ (1964, p. 91). To refer to this body of doctrine
(‘abstracting away from much variation’), Chomsky coins the term ‘taxonomic
phonemics’ (p. 91), which he defines as that version of classical phonemic theory which
subscribes to the following five conditions: (1) ‘phonemic specifiability’, (2) ‘linearity’,
(3) ‘invariance’, (4) ‘biuniqueness’ and (5) ‘local determinacy’. These are familiar
enough that I need not pause here to recapitulate Chomsky’s definitions. But it must have
struck the classical phonemicist of 1962 to hear his work so described, since the terms
(biuniqueness excluded) appear to have been coined (like the pejorative label ‘taxonomic
phonemics’ itself) by Chomsky. (170)
Oenbring / 110
Crafting New Identity through Appeals to Tradition
In a 1963 chapter in The Handbook of Mathematical Psychology “Formal
Properties of Grammars,” Chomsky first introduced his dichotomy between competence
and performance: a dichotomy that would be a defining element of Chomsky’s work in
the mid-sixties. As I explain in the introduction, competence deals with native speakers
intuitions of well-formedness while performance has to do with what speakers actually
say in real social situations. In “Formal Properties,” Chomsky explains the dichotomy in
part as follows: while competence involves the speaker’s “knowledge of his language,”
performance relates to “certain aspects of his behavior as he puts competence to use”
(326).
While Chomsky’s mentalist agenda in “Formal Properties” is clear, he is more
circumspect in regard to his mentalist proclamations than he would be later in the decade
(see, for example, 327-328). Instead, Chomsky looks outside his home discipline to the
fledgling field of cognitive psychology to ground his claims regarding the mind. Looking
for support to undergird his claims that knowledge of language (i.e., competence) should
be the proper object of linguistic inquiry, Chomsky states that “psychologists have long
recognized that a description of what an organism does and a description of what it
knows can be very different things (cf. Lashley 1929, p. 533; Tolman, 1932, p. 364)”
Oenbring / 111
(326).111 Chomsky also claims Saussure’s langue / parole dichotomy as a direct historical
precursor for his competence / performance divide.
As Joseph notes in his piece “Ideologizing Saussure,” a quasi-rhetorical analysis
of how Chomsky and Bloomfield both used the Cours in order to legitimate their own
systems, one of Chomsky’s main goals in “Formal Properties” is to claim affinity with
the Cours — a piece that Chomsky claims “inaugurated the modern era of language
study” (327) — in order to frame his own work as following in the footsteps of an
original linguistic authority and established scientific methodological tradition, thereby
making the post-Bloomfieldians the interlopers. Specifically, Joseph suggests that
“Formal Properties”:
represents Chomsky’s first extensive attempt to align himself with a preBloomfieldian precursor. In the early 1960s, Chomsky’s main opposition was the
linguistic establishment dominated by the former students of Bloomfield, many of
whom tried to portray Chomsky as a Young Turk with no respect for the tradition
they were upholding. Chomsky defused this weapon by finding a tradition older
than theirs with which to align his own views. What he found was the [Cours]. It
allowed him to portray the neo-Bloomfieldians as the true upstarts, and himself as
the defender of traditional linguistic enquiry. (68)
Chomsky invokes Saussure’s name in order to associate himself with a venerable preBloomfieldian precursor, claiming for his party the banner of scientific linguistics. 112
111
That Chomsky would first introduce a bold and important distinction like the competence /
performance divide in a book directed to an audience of psychologists (in particular cognitive
psychologists), not linguists is, for certain, interesting from a rhetorical perspective.
Oenbring / 112
While Chomsky invokes the authority of the Cours in order to support the idea of
an abstract formal system of relationships (langue / competence), not language as it is
actually used (parole / performance), that should the proper object of linguistic inquiry,
Chomsky, nevertheless, critiques the limitations of Saussure’s dichotomy in “Formal
Properties.”113 Indeed, we might call what Chomsky engages in “Formal Properties” a
strategic misreading of the Cours; Chomsky uses the authority of the Cours and its
famous langue / parole divide as rhetorical support for his own largely unique
dichotomy. Joseph, for example, notes that:
the agenda behind Chomsky (1963) is to highlight every possible correlation
between [the Cours] and Chomsky’s own work. The principal misreading
motivated by this agenda is the claimed identity of Comskyan linguistic
competence with Saussurean langue. Chomsky (1963) completely ignores … the
most salient features of langue, first that it has both an individual and a social
aspect, neither of which can be conceived without the other (cf. Chomsky 1986:
16) (68)
As Joseph suggests, Chomsky latches onto Saussure’s model, a model that had some
respect among linguists, only to distort its core ideas. In this regard, Chomsky’s using
Saussure’s model as a foothold, only to critique its limitations, is roughly analogous to
Anderson similarly notes that Chomsky’s “claims that this earlier work (whether philosophical
or linguistic) was in some way the source or origin of notions in generative grammar would have
to be qualified as mere rationalization ex post facto. Chomsky’s ideas were developed largely in
isolation from the linguistic tradition” (322).
113
Chomsky claims that “our discussion departs from a strict Saussurian conception in two ways.
First, we say nothing about the semantic side of langue. … Second, our conception of langue
differs from Saussure’s in one fundamental respect; namely, langue must be represented as a
generative process based on recursive rules” (328).
112
Oenbring / 113
how Chomsky had earlier treated formal logic; Chomsky used models supported by a
tradition of inquiry only to discard important elements of their core claims and carry on
without those core notions.114
However, Saussure has not been the only pre-Bloomfieldian precursor that
Chomsky has invoked in his attempts to claim the authority of tradition. In the sixties, for
example, Chomsky invoked the name and authority of several other even earlier preBloomfieldian precursors, including most prominently, the following: the Port-Royal
grammarians Antoine Arnauld (1612-1694) and Claude Lancelot (1615-1695); linguist,
philosopher, and diplomat Wihelm von Humboldt (1767-1835); and even philosopher
René Descartes (1596-1650).115 Indeed, invoking the authority of older linguists,
philosophers, and scientists has been, as I shall demonstrate later, a rhetorical maneuver
that Chomsky has routinely used throughout his work.
Going Negative: Boundary Work
114
Remember that constructive nominalism, the philosophical framework he had used to ground
his earliest publication, was strongly anti-mentalist and only cautiously realist. Chomsky by the
1960s was openly mentalist and realist.
115
As I chronicle later in this study, perhaps the most interesting of these pre-Bloomfieldian
precursors is Descartes, whose name had long been associated with a deprecated school of
thought held clearly distinct in philosophical discourse from the classical modern ‘empiricism’ of
Locke, Hume, Berkeley. That school is classical modern ‘rationalism’, something Chomsky has,
largely successfully, construed as an early form of mentalism. Although the ‘opposite’ empirical
school of Locke, Hume, and Berkeley, could not be said to rule the study of philosophy in the
early-to-mid twentieth century, the logical positivist variant of empiricism did have a prominent
place in contemporary philosophical inquiry. By invoking Descartes’ name in works like Aspects
and Cartesian Linguistics, Chomsky worked to construe his methods as both part of a long
tradition, deprecated in recent work. The effect of Chomsky’s claimed affinity to (or perhaps
descent from) the long deprecated throne of Descartes is to construct the existence a ‘pendulum
swing’ back to rationalism.
Oenbring / 114
As Chomsky’s critique of post-Bloomfieldian phonology in Current Issues
suggests, by the sixties Chomsky and his followers did more than articulate what they
thought to be a unique set of positive assertions for the program of generative grammar;
they did more than articulate a unique disciplinary identity for generative grammar, an
identity decidedly opposed to the post-Bloomfieldian approach. From the beginning of
the sixties until the end of the decade, Chomsky and his followers also engaged in a
continuous program to root out the remaining elements of post-Bloomfieldian linguistics;
they had made their bold claims for the identity of linguistics, and now sought to make
the kill.
To use the terminology that rhetoricians of science like Charles Alan Taylor
(1996), following sociologist Gieryn (e.g., 1999) have used to describe disputes between
rival groups of scholars each seeking to lay claim to the banner of ‘science’, what
Chomsky and his followers engaged in by critiquing the post-Bloomfieldians was
boundary work: attempting to set rival theories as outside the boundaries of science. As
Gieryn argues, in boundary work “all sides seek to legitimate their claims about natural
reality as scientifically made and vetted inside the authoritative cultural space, while
drawing a map to put discrepant claims and claimants outside (or, at least, on the
margins). Real science is demarcated from several categories of posers: pseudoscience,
amateur science, deviant or fraudulent science, bad science, junk science, popular
science” (16). What’s more, Gieryn notes that “boundary-work to exclude and impostor
‘scientist’ will focus attention on the poser’s failure to conform to expected
methodological or ethical standards various mapped out as necessary for genuine
Oenbring / 115
scientific practice” (22).While boundary work is not exclusively negative in polarity,116
confrontational moments are, for certain, the clearest instances of the phenomenon.
As many scholars have noted, the most vitriolic attacks on the postBloomfieldians were not carried out by Chomsky, but were instead carried out by his
more motivated (rabid?) students and former students; Chomsky-Darwin was no doubt
helped in that he had at his command a graduate program producing crops of young
would-be Huxleys. Indeed, Chomsky and Halle encouraged even first year MIT graduate
students to participate actively in the intellectual culture of linguistics, creating a clear
divide between the young army of generative grammarians and the older generation of
post-Bloomfieldians.
As Newmeyer notes in the following pair of quotes, the youth weren’t afraid to
tell the older generation that they were incorrect, routinely picking apart the presentations
of post-Bloomfieldians at conferences. Newmeyer suggests that:
It must be admitted, however, that the confrontational style that many early
generativists adopted in their writings and in their behavior at public conferences
was also very effective at winning over the young. Chomsky himself has always
been rather restrained, at least in public. But two of his earliest collaborators,
Robert B. Lees and Paul Postal, became legendary for their uncompromising
attacks on the work of the “Old Guard.” No paper or presentation that betrayed an
empiricist orientation to linguistics could get by unscathed. Some of these attacks
116
Indeed, once a set of methods has installed itself upon the throne of truth [i.e., once it has
achieved hegemony] it no longer needs a sword to engage in boundary work; its mere dominance
is a form of boundary work.
Oenbring / 116
were nothing less than vicious, going well beyond the norms of scholarly
criticism, and were felt to impugn their opponents’ intelligence and character as
well as their ideas about linguistic research.
While Newmeyer avoids the term, what he is speaking of here are commonly referred to
as ad hominem (and technically in the classical tradition referred to as argumentum ad
personam) appeals.
This intergenerational tension was certainly heightened by the political
atmosphere of the sixties, despite the fact that many of the old guard no doubt would
have been sympathetic with the political ideals of the new generation of the professoriate
being trained in the sixties. Nonetheless, the confrontational style of rhetoric ruled the
day. Newmeyer continues:
The mood on campuses in the 1960s was conducive to the success of a
confrontational style. Students who perhaps an hour earlier had raised their
voices in anger at a civil rights or anti-war rally felt instantly with Lees or Postal
whose barrage of rhetoric was directed against a generally accepted set of
intellectual propositions. The similarities of style between political and linguistic
revolutionaries apparently led some students to think that generative grammar
must have an intrinsically progressive political content. (The Politics of
Linguistics 81)117
It should be noted that Postal, one Chomsky’s original bulldogs that Newmeyer notes here
eventually became a generative semanticist and now directs much of his academic work to
attempting to directly refute Chomsky’s project (see, for example, Skeptical Linguistic Essays, “A
Linguistics Corrupted” [with Robert Levine] [Postal and Levine are also working on a manuscript
117
Oenbring / 117
While this end of this quote is certainly speculative, one should not underestimate how
the revolutionary fervor of the 1960s might have caused among the new generation of the
professoriate being trained at the time a desire to feel like they were participating in a
scientific revolution.
The Aspects Program, the ‘Standard Theory’, and the Appeal to Meaning
A common analogy made in generative grammar is to refer to Syntactic Structures
as the Old Testament and 1965’s Aspects of the Theory of Syntax as the New Testament,
an analogy that I have apparently not avoided. That is to say, Aspects has, like Syntactic
Structures, undeniably played an important role in the history of generative grammar —
and has been cited by other scholars as an ultimate source to legitimate further inquiry —
but is, for certain, difficult to account for without over-romanticizing its influence.
(Nonetheless, I will try.) The model proposed by Aspects is commonly referred to by
generative grammarians as the standard theory.118 However, the term standard theory is
a misleading term as it was developed by Chomsky himself.119 Nevertheless, the term
standard theory is a term that is used commonly, and often unreflectively — even by
historians of linguistics (see, for example, Harlow 331).
tentatively titled The Intellectually Corrupt Linguistics of Avram Noam Chomsky (The AntiChomsky Reader 249)]).
118
Sometimes included in the standard theory is Katz and Postal’s 1964 book An Integrated
Theory of Linguistic Description — a volume that, despite its title suggesting clear systembuilding ambitions, demonstrates clear deference to Chomsky’s ideas. (What is generally credited
as Katz and Postal’s main contribution to the standard theory is the notion that transformations to
do not change the meaning of the lexical items that move, a notion that can be traced back to
Katz’ earlier 1963 article with Fodor “The Structure of a Semantic Theory.”)
119
What’s more, Chomsky himself was the impetus behind the canonization of Aspects and An
Integrated Theory as the master texts of the standard theory.
Oenbring / 118
With the Aspects program, Chomsky made several (usually considered vital)
updates to the current model of generative grammar, many of them technical and
therefore outside the scope of this study. Among the more important technical
propositions of Aspects are: the addition of a lexicon (basically a ‘dictionary’ of words) to
the base (i.e., the death of generalized transformations); the addition of base recursion
(recursion means that the system of rules can feedback, or call upon itself); and the
addition of ∆-nodes, the first semantically and phonologically null placeholder (i.e.,
having no phonetic manifestation) that Chomsky — this time following Katz and Postal
— would suggest.120
While the technical advancements of Aspects are noteworthy, what secured the
text’s importance and its fame are its bolder (and mostly vaguer) proclamations —
particularly those relating to the notion of meaning (e.g., the deep structure / surface
structure divide). Indeed, it is common to suggest that the explosion of intellectual
activity surrounding syntax that occurred in the mid-sixties occurred because Aspects
brought “semantics out of the closet” (McCawley [1976: 6], qtd. in Newmeyer
[1986:81]). This is interesting, seeing that Chomsky’s propositions relating to meaning
were not, by and large, the most novel features of the Aspects model;121 as presented in
Aspects, deep structure is primarily a syntactic rather than semantic notion. Indeed,
Seuren argues in his Western Linguistics that in Aspects Chomsky makes “no effort … to
120
Chomsky and other generative grammarians would propose many more semantically and
phonologically null elements in the seventies and eighties.
121
Indeed, Harris notes in The Linguistics Wars that despite being referred to jokingly as the New
Testament “Aspects’ hermeneutical potential is much closer to the prophetic book of the Old
Testament than the New, and subsequent generations of linguists have found support in it for an
amazing range of propositions” (82).
Oenbring / 119
fill in any details of the Semantic Component. Aspects is not about meaning
representations or about projection rules, but about syntax and its relation to the lexicon”
(Seuren [1998: 487]). Although it is true that Chomsky did not first articulate many of
the bolder ideas that have become associated with Aspects in the book itself,122 Aspects
has, nevertheless, become the most famous of Chomsky’s technical texts of this era, with
Chomsky and others using the claims of Aspects to undergird their later claims.
For certain, the fame of Aspects has to do with all of the following: the
attractiveness of the technical models presented in the book; the emphasis that Chomsky
and his followers have placed on the book after the fact (i.e., their attempts to canonize
it); the vague and alluring nature of Chomsky’s proclamations regarding meaning in the
text; and also mere historical accident. Nevertheless, good rhetorical analysis — of the
type I try to provide in this study — pays attention to what people actually read into texts
rather than what is actually there; good rhetorical analysis pays attention to the actual
reception of a text. That is to say, there are good reasons for my focus on the rhetorical
nature of Chomsky’s statements in regard to meaning in Aspects — specifically, that his
statements have been remarkably successful in encouraging other linguists to adopt his
model.123 Indeed, while Chomsky himself has always made clear that deep structure
122
For example, Chomsky speaks of deep structure and universal grammar in Current Issues
(60).
123
Randy Harris also notes that although Chomsky’s statements regarding meaning in Aspects are
not extensively supported, Chomsky’s statements about meaning (specifically deep structure)
nevertheless became the most important ideas in the book to the linguistic community. Thus
Aspects can properly be read as an argument for Chomsky’s analyses of meaning. Harris states
that “it’s true that Aspects does not offer specific justifications for deep structure, but since deep
structure was the linchpin of a theory that the entire community … found very compelling, the
Aspects model itself was quite literally an extended argument for deep structure” ( Harris 1993:
167).
Oenbring / 120
should not be understood as an explanation of anything, the concept of deep structure,
nevertheless, became the ideological lynchpin of late-60s generative work; others read
much more into deep structure as presented in Aspects than is actually stated in the study.
Nevertheless, Chomsky, due to his bold style of exposition, gave the generation of
generative grammarians being trained in the mid-sixties plenty of reasons to believe that
the system he was presenting was both totally new and was profoundly insightful. First of
all, like Current Issues, in the early pages of Aspects — what I shall call the world
creation section — Chomsky attempts to system build; Chomsky makes it clear that what
the text offers is a system of positive, largely innovative proposals.
For example, early on in Aspects, Chomsky boldly declares that linguistic theory
“is mentalistic, since it is concerned with discovering a mental reality underlying actual
behavior” (4). (Notice how he now avoids the hedging found in “Formal Properties” and
Current Issues.) On the same page, Chomsky reasserts the dichotomy between
competence and performance. Still early in the book, Chomsky reasserts his levels of
adequacy schema, this time avoiding presenting and analyzing the lowest level
observational adequacy (i.e., the level of the post-Bloomfieldians). Instead, Chomsky
attempts to steer linguistic theory toward the lofty goal of explanatory adequacy by
dividing only between it and descriptive adequacy; mere observational adequacy has
been left by the wayside. Finally, still within the world-creation pages, Chomsky
articulates a concept that would become a rallying point for linguists of many stripes: the
Oenbring / 121
notion of universal grammar (the concept that there is a system of rules governing syntax
and language acquisition that is part of the human genetic endowment).
Like his other core ideas, Chomsky first introduces the deep structure / surface
structure divide early in Aspects, claiming that “the syntactic component of a grammar
must specify, for each sentence, a deep structure that determines its semantic
interpretation and a surface structure that determines its phonetic interpretation” (16).
Although this proclamation sounds authoritative, the evidence actually presented is quite
skimpy. To provide evidence for the deep structure / surface structure divide, Chomsky
examines the following pair of sentences:
(6) I persuaded John to leave
(7) I expected John to leave (22)
Despite appearing deceptively similar on the surface, sentences (6) and (7), according to
Chomsky, encode quite different grammatical relations. That is to say (6) and (7) “are the
same in surface structure, but very different in the deep structure that underlies them and
determines their semantic interpretation” (24). While in (6) John can be said
unproblematically to be the direct object of persuade, in (7) the whole infinitive clause
John to leave constitutes the direct object of expect.124 These two example sentences have
quite different internal grammatical relations despite appearing on surface to be nearly
identical. Thus, Chomsky claims that these examples illustrate “how unrevealing surface
structure may be as to underlying deep structure” (24).125
124
I am simplifying for explanatory purposes.
Although Chomsky suggests precedent for the notion of deep structure in the works of
Humboldt and Wittgenstein (recall his invocation of pre-Bloomfieldian precursors), his notion of
125
Oenbring / 122
Chomsky’s specific discussions of deep structure and surface structure are, by
turns, alluringly vague (allowing interpretive creativity), and at other times technically
formulated using formal syntax; as presented in Aspects, the deep structure / surface
structure divide is both an alluring rhetorical dichotomy and a technical formal definition.
While the alluring rhetorical dichotomy side won followers for Chomsky and his model,
the technically defined side of deep structure allowed Chomsky and his followers to have
in their possession a rigorous, possibly even scientific way to deal with questions of
meaning. That is to say, Chomsky and his followers had in their hands a dual-barreled
rhetoric with the concept of deep structure. Deep structure allowed the appearance of a
rigorous way to deal with meaning and the appearance of profound insight.
As many scholars have noted (including Chomsky in Aspects [24]), the idea that
there exists a deep, hidden level of meaning far beneath the mere surface level of
language is a very old concept in Western intellectualizing regarding language. Indeed,
Seuren (1971) suggests that:
No idea is older in the history of linguistics than the thought that there is,
somehow hidden underneath the surface of sentences, a form or a structure which
provides a semantic analysis and lays bare their logical structure. In Plato’s
Cratylus the theory was proposed, deriving from Heraclitus’ theory of
deep structure is uniquely his own — in that he defines it according to the relations of items in
hierarchic syntactic trees. Basically, the level deep structure as articulated in Aspects is analogous
to the step right before but not including the transformations in Syntactic Structures. However, in
the Aspects model lexical items are inserted in the tree at deep structure, not produced by
morphophonemic phrase structure rules as in Syntactic Structures. (Recall that the analysis in
Syntactic Structures dealt largely with the interaction of morphological elements.)
Oenbring / 123
explanatory underlying structure in physical nature, that words contain within
themselves bits of syntactic structure giving their meanings” (1973 [1971: 528])
Here Seuren traces the surface structure / deep structure divide back to the Greeks.
Elsewhere, other scholars (not to mention Chomsky himself) have trace the history of
what would become the surface structure / deep structure divide back to the Middle Ages.
126
Nevertheless, the long history of speculation regarding the existence of something
like deep structure indicates that there is clearly a seductive ideological element (read:
non-scientific) at work.
Whether or not Chomsky had originally intended deep structure to play an
important role in Aspects itself, in later work he would emphasize the importance of the
divide between surface structure and deep structure; he would make the dichotomy a
central feature of the Aspects model / standard theory. For example, by the mid sixties,
Chomsky would use the deep structure / surface structure as a tool for arguing for the
irrelevance of post-Bloomfieldian work. In his 1966 book consisting of reedited lectures
originally delivered to the Linguistic Society of America Topics in the Theory of
Generative Grammar, Chomsky, for example, uses the divide between surface structure
and deep structure as a wedge technique, charging his critics with suggesting that the
linguist “must limit himself to what I called … ‘surface structure’, in fact, to certain
restricted aspects of surface structure” (25). Post-Bloomfieldian work is uninteresting
126
More recently, Seuren (1998) notes that the existence of something like the surface structure /
deep structure distinction in the work of medieval grammarian Sanctius, suggesting that “idea it is
necessary to define, for each sentence, a semantic representation, and to define a rule system
relating semantic representations to surface sentences and vice versa. This conclusion had
already been drawn in principle by Sanctius” (1998: 474). (It should, however, be noted that
Percival and Robin Lakoff had much earlier noted this.)
Oenbring / 124
because it does not pay attention to deep structure. Moreover, in later work Chomsky
would also work to emphasize the importance of the notion of deep structure to the
Aspects model. Indeed, in the seventies he would claim the notion of deep structure to be
the core claim of the standard theory when he was trying to shore up the place of the
extended standard theory. That is to say, whether or not Chomsky originally intended
the surface structure / deep structure distinction to be a prominent element of the Aspects
model, in later work he made the dichotomy one of the central propositions of the book
— and by extension the lynchpin of the entire generative community. (That is to say,
Chomsky made the notion of deep structure a core element of generative disciplinary
identity.)
Rhetorical Elements of The Sound Pattern of English
Fulfilling the desired abstract system circumscribed in Current Issues and other
earlier work, Chomsky and Halle’s long-anticipated 1968 book The Sound Pattern of
English (SPE) offered a thoroughly-developed system of generative phonology to the
linguistic community. Now one of Chomsky’s more infamous technical books (even
among continued supporters of Chomsky), SPE united abstract universalizing phonology
and system-building ambitions with a bold program of realist claims. That is to say, SPE
is bold and takes itself seriously — all while offering ornate, abstract, and dubious
derivations. (Needless to say, an extensive analysis of the SPE model is outside the scope
of this study.)
Oenbring / 125
Following Current Issues, a core idea undergirding SPE is that the linguist’s task
is to develop elegant (a.k.a. best possible) theories rather than the most empiricallycareful theories, thereby allowing the linguist to posit more abstract entities and processes
than a merely observationally adequate account. Chomsky’s term to describe this notion
is evaluation procedures, a notion that he distinguishes from discovery procedures (i.e.,
that all we can do is evaluate grammars; we cannot discover directly the grammar in our
minds). (Recall that Chomsky first drew this dichotomy in Syntactic Structures.)
Chomsky and Halle spend the early pages of the SPE setting up what appear to be
a unique and new set of methodological assumptions. In the preface of the study, they
argue that:
For one concerned solely with the facts of English, the gradations of stress may
not seem more important than the gradations of aspiration. Our reason for
concentrating on the former and neglecting the latter is that we are not, in this
work concerned exclusively or even primarily with the facts of English as such.
We are interested in these facts for the light they shed on linguistic theory (on
what, in an earlier period, would have been have been called “universal
grammar”) and for what they suggest about the nature of mental processes in
general. It seems to us that that gradations of stress in English can be explained on
the basis of very deep-seated and nontrivial assumptions about universal grammar
and that this conclusion is highly suggestive for psychology” (viii)
There are many interesting rhetorical maneuvers here. For one, Chomsky and Halle
claim that the facts of English are only of interest insofar as they offer insight into a
Oenbring / 126
totalizing system of phonology that can account for the facts of all language; even though
the examples are in English the work is not “concerned exclusively or even primarily
with the facts of English.” The formalisms that they use to describe English stress are
not mere formalisms. Rather, they “can be explained on the basis of very deep-seated
and nontrivial assumptions about universal grammar.” What’s more, Chomsky and Halle
suggest that their findings have implications for other, more biologically-focused fields,
stating that their conclusions are “highly suggestive for psychology.”
Despite the fact that the work begins by hedging, suggesting that the theories
presented are only at an intermediate state, SPE — due in part to its bold claims, and in
part to its expansive (although by no means exhaustive) treatment of English phonology
— became the main point of reference for later generative phonology. What’s more, the
book’s emphasis on evaluation procedures helped legitimate an environment in which
linguistic theories ultimately boil down to judgment calls, and the fact that Chomsky and
Halle — two of the most famous linguists in the world by this point — offered their own
in the book, no doubt helped the prominence of SPE.127
As Anderson suggests, one of the most important features of SPE is that it
institutionalized and legitimated a particular metalanguage; it gave linguists interested in
working within a universally-focused theory of phonology a common parlance and point
of reference. Specifically, Anderson states that:
the publication of SPE also had another, symbolic importance. It marked the end
of an era in which the major works of generative linguistics (in syntax as well as
What’s more, one could certainly make the case for rhetorical reading of the book’s tome-like
appearance.
127
Oenbring / 127
in phonology) were circulated primarily … among a small circle of insiders, with
those not on the necessary mailing lists confined to secondhand reports and
rumors for their information on the shape of theoretical developments. Overt,
formal publication of a reasonably definitive description of the principles of the
theory made it much more a matter of public property, and enfranchised a much
broader audience of potential contributors and critics. (328)
Whereas those outside of Cambridge were out of the loop before SPE, they now were
“enfranchised.” While the assumed power of MIT to establish a model no doubt is
present in Anderson’s assessment, Anderson, true to his generativist roots, does not
question Chomsky’s authority to spread doctrine.
The Extended Standard Theory and Boundary Work
As I have previously suggested, the vague propositions of Aspects regarding
surface structure and deep structure eventually led to an extended disagreement between
two competing camps: the so-called interpretive semanticists (led by Chomsky) and the
so-called generative semanticists (led by George Lakoff and James McCawley). This was
a disagreement that was by many accounts rather nasty. The so-called linguistics wars
have been given thorough treatment by Newmeyer (1980 [1986]), Harris (1993), and
Huck and Goldsmith (1995), and I shall say only a limited amount about them here.
Broadly stated, generative semanticists found Chomsky’s notion of deep structure, as
expressed in Aspects too limited. Generative semanticists sought to break down the
boundaries between syntax and semantics, all while paying more attention to pragmatic
Oenbring / 128
and discourse features. In pursuit of a deep, presumably unifying level of meaning,
generative semanticists proposed ever more formal, abstract and dubious deep
structures.128 Along the way, the notion of deep structure became a defining element of
generative semanticists’ identity. However, one could argue that by defining their
practice against the limited notion of deep structure promoted by Chomsky, generative
semanticists (particularly George Lakoff) took the bait; they were defining their school in
regard to a notion deeply associated with Chomsky’s person (and that he therefore had
the prerogative to redefine).129
Boiled down to its core elements, the plot of the linguistics wars doesn’t sound
particularly dramatic, but it goes something like this: inspired by the notion of deep
structure presented in Aspects, Lakoff and others went in search of a unified deep layer of
meaning; the theory spread while Chomsky was at Berkeley; Chomsky returned to
Cambridge, published several important pieces on the place of semantics in generative
grammar, the field moved to the extended standard theory; and all was right again in the
world. While the available accounts of the history of this debate differ in their emphasis
(e.g., Newmeyer suggests that Chomsky won because he was right, and Huck and
Goldsmith suggest Chomsky won in part because of his authority and in part because of
institutional sanctioning), the available histories of the linguistics wars all avoid
extensive analysis of the rhetorical features of Chomsky’s most important publications
during this period. Such an analysis — in addition to an analysis of the rhetorical
128
I am, however, simplifying the set of terminology for ease of exposition.
What’s more, by changing nuances associated with the notion of deep structure — something
that he was privileged to do because of his authority – Chomsky was able to, in effect, pull the
rug out from underneath the generative semanticists.
129
Oenbring / 129
maneuvers involved in Chomsky’s work to move the field from the standard theory to
what he calls the extended standard theory (thus leading to the first of Chomsky’s
subsequent sub-revolutions in the field) — is what I aim to provide in the following
pages.
In a 1970 book chapter130 “Deep Structure, Surface Structure, and Semantic
Interpretation,” Chomsky engages in his first major attempt to pull the rug out from
underneath the generative semantics movement. From a rhetorical perspective the goals
of the piece are as follows: to assert the primacy of the set of theories presented in
Aspects; and to draw a clear line between his work and the theories of the generative
semantics school, an approach that he denigrates. (Recall that many generative
semanticists thought of their work as well within the goals of Aspects.) Chomsky
engages in boundary work; he attempts to frame the generative semanticists as promoters
of theories that are by turns misleading or not distinguishable from his own program.
Starting with an overview of the recent history of the field, in “Deep Structure,
Surface Structure” Chomsky makes clear that there are important differences between the
proposals of Aspects and those of a “more ‘semantically-based’ grammar”131 (1970
[1972: 62]); Chomsky draws a neat dichotomy between Aspects-influenced work and that
of the generative semanticists. (Once again, it is important to remember that many
generative semanticists considered their work as fulfilling the goals of and working
“Deep Structure, Surface Structure, and Semantic Interpretation” is based in part in on lectures
Chomsky first gave in Japan in summer 1966.
131
Of course, by this he means the generative semanticists.
130
Oenbring / 130
within the tradition of Aspects; Chomsky is attempting to frame generative semantics as a
clearly different tradition, distinguishable from Aspects-inspired work.)
Continuing, Chomsky assumes “two universal language-independent systems of
representation.” Chomsky draws a methodological dichotomy between “a phonetic
system for the specification of sound” and a “semantic system for the specification of
meaning” (62). While Chomsky suggests work on the phonetic side to be on track
(specifically because of his joint 1968 publication with Halle, The Sound Pattern of
English), he recognizes the difficulty that linguists and philosophers are having in
semantics. Chomsky laments that “in the domain of semantics there are, needless to say,
problem of fact and principle that have barely been approached, and there is no
reasonably concrete or well-defined ‘theory of semantic representation’ to which one can
refer” (62). Later on in the piece, Chomsky continues to denigrate the study of meaning
in contemporary linguistic inquiry, stating that:
A good part of the critique and the elaboration of the standard theory in the past
few years has focused on the notion of deep structure and the relation of semantic
representation to deep structure. This is quite natural. No area of linguistic
theory is more veiled in obscurity and confusion and it may be that fundamentally
new ideas and insights will be needed for substantial progress to be made in
bringing order to this domain. (76)
In this statement, Chomsky is priming the pump for later changes he will try to bring to
the field. As the study of meaning is in a state of chaos, what is needed is “fundamentally
new ideas and insights” (read: a revolution).
Oenbring / 131
Chomsky then spends several paragraphs outlining the major assumptions of the
Aspects program, offering a label clearly meant to underline the importance of the book’s
proposals. Specifically, Chomsky suggests that “I will refer to any elaboration of this
theory of grammar as a ‘standard theory’” (66).132 (Note how early in the piece Chomsky
still refers to “a standard theory,” admitting the existence of several possible standard
theories, before speaking openly of “the standard theory” [e.g., 70] later in the piece.)
The goal of this move is quite clear: Chomsky is attempting to assert the primacy of the
program articulated in Aspects.
One of Chomsky’s main goals in the piece is to suggest his theories, unlike those
of generative semanticists, are well-formed (i.e., precisely crafted using formal logical
syntax). Continuing to draw a line between the “syntactically-based standard theory” and
competing “semantically-based” (69) theories, Chomsky, nevertheless, attempts to
collapse competing frameworks into the standard theory; Chomsky suggests that the
theories of generative semanticists are by turns both different and indistinguishable from
his own work.133
After working to assert the primacy of the Aspects program, Chomsky then shifts
gears to proposing a way to deal with language phenomena such as Focus,
However, Chomsky also claims that this is label is “merely for convenience of discussion and
with no intention of implying that it has some unique conceptual or empirical status” (66).
133
For example, picking apart a set of proposals by McCawley, Chomsky claims, for example,
that “McCawley’s analysis, right or wrong, is simply a realization of the standard theory” (79).
After engaging in a similar critique of Lakoff’s work, Chomsky makes similar claims regarding
the case system advocated by Fillmore in his famous 1968 essay “The Case for Case.”
Chomsky’s critique is the same: all of these theories are not “empirically distinguishable from the
standard system” (69). Accordingly, critiques of the standard theory “have been, so far, without
consequence” (78).
132
Oenbring / 132
Presupposition, and even intonation within the Aspects model.134 Focus and
Presupposition were (and remain) a problem of generative grammar as they are a clear
case where discourse and pragmatic features have a substantive effect on the meaning of
the sentence; the surface structure clearly has an effect on meaning. Consider the
following pair of sentences:
(75) (i) did Bill give John the BOOK
(ii) did Bill give the book to JOHN (102)
A theory that claims that all meaning should be defined at deep structure (as the Aspects
program suggests) appears to be unable to account for the different nuances of meaning
in the above sentences. However, there are clear differences in the meaning, or at least
the occasion in which one might use, the two sentences. Whereas in (i) John is the likely
object of previous conversation (i.e., the focus), in (ii) it is more likely the book.135
Chomsky recognizes that Focus and Presupposition may appear to be a serious
problem for the Aspects model, stating that “I wish only to emphasize that these notions
seem to involve surface structure in an essential way, and thus to provide strong counterevidence to the standard theory, which stipulates that semantic interpretation must be
entirely determined by deep structure” (101). Chomsky nevertheless finds a way to
“preserve the standard theory” (101) all while accounting for the role that Focus and
134
Focus and Presupposition had been a major concern of generative semanticists such as Lakoff
(see, for example, Lakoff [1965], [1967], [1972]), and, no doubt Chomsky’s inclusion of this
discussion is a result of such analyses. Nevertheless, in his more than twenty-page discussion of
Focus and Presupposition, Chomsky only cites Lakoff in one footnote.
135
Chomsky, for example, analyzes the sentence is it JOHN who writes poetry? , stating that “the
semantic representation of [the sentence] must indicate, in some manner, that John is the FOCUS
of the sentence and that the sentence expresses the presupposition that someone writes poetry”
(89).
Oenbring / 133
Presupposition play in meaning by gerrymandering the theory through a technical
redefinition. (I do not have room for an extensive explanation the specifics here.)
What’s more, Chomsky endorses these manipulations of the standard theory
despite the fact that they clearly cut into the beauty of deep structure as articulated in
Aspects. Any substantive content that the theory of deep structure may have had is now,
much less clear; the theory of deep structure is now much less clearly non-vacuous.
Indeed, Chomsky directly acknowledges that the changes that he sponsors make the
theory “merely a notational variant of a theory that determines focus and presupposition
from the surface structure.” In the end, however, Chomsky maintains a firm commitment
to the Aspects program, arguing that the technical manipulations he proposes “do not
touch on one aspect of the standard theory, namely, the hypothesis that the grammatical
relations that enter into semantic interpretation are those represented in deep structure”
(1970 [1972: 102]).
In a related essay from the same time period, “Some Empirical Issues in the
theory of Transformational Grammar,” a piece first presented at a 1969 conference at UT
Austin and published later in the important 1972 volume Goals of Linguistic Theory,
Chomsky continues developing the issues explored in “Deep Structure, Surface
Structure.” While continuing to assert the primacy of the Aspects program, Chomsky
makes the bolder move of the field from the standard theory to the extended standard
theory. As he does in “Deep Structure” Chomsky begins “Some Empirical Issues” with
Oenbring / 134
an assertion of the primacy of the Aspects program. 136 Chomsky, however, admits
several problems with the current standard theory — specifically in regard to the theory
of deep structure. Chomsky offers two options for rectifying the situation in “Some
Empirical Issues.” The first is to adopt a generative semantics, a school whose major
contributors Chomsky dissects and critiques later in the piece. The second is to accept
the standard theory “approximately as given” (73), but to reconstitute it as the extended
standard theory. The rhetorical purpose of this label is to suggest development in the
theory, all while emphasizing its continuity with the standard theory. While Chomsky
largely avoids indicating the origin of the concerns that he is promoting in the piece, the
differences between the standard theory and the extended standard theory largely reflect
the concerns of generative semanticists (e.g., Focus and Presupposition) as well as more
in the fold generative grammarians (e.g., Jackendoff). The extended standard theory
differs from the standard theory, according to Chomsky,137 only in that:
semantic interpretation is held to be determined by the pair (deep structure,
surface structure) of Σ, rather than by the deep structure alone; further, it is
proposed that insofar as grammatical relations play a role in determining meaning,
it is the grammatical relations of the deep structure that are relevant (as before),
but that such matters as scope of “logical elements” and quantifiers, coreference,
Like in “Deep Structure,” Chomsky strategically invokes Greek letters and formalism in his
definition of deep structure, with the goal being to make a case that his theory of deep structure is
more well-defined than that offered by the generative semanticists. Chomsky states that “the
concept of ‘deep structure’ is well-defined: the deep structure of a derivation Σ = (P1,…Pn) is the
phrase marker Pi such that for j ≤ i, Pj is formed from Pj..1 by a lexical transformation, and for j ˃
i, Pj is formed by a nonlexical transformation” (71).
137
We can defer to Chomsky as he offers an explicit definition.
136
Oenbring / 135
focus and certain kinds of presupposition, and certain other properties, are
determined by rules that take surface structure (more precisely, phonetically
interpreted surface structure) into account. (1972: 134)
As this passage suggests, what were previously derided as mere surface features of
language, not of interest to linguistic theory, Chomsky now recognizes as features that
encode meaning in a substantial way.
Although “Deep Structure” and “Some Empirical Issues” are important from both
rhetorical and methodological perspective, Chomsky’s landmark publication of this era is
his 1970 book chapter “Remarks on Nominalization.”138 Unlike “Some Empirical Issues”
and “Deep Structure, Surface Structure,” “Remarks” spends no room negotiating the
standard theory / extended standard theory nomenclature. Instead, Chomsky attempts to
pull the rug out from underneath the generative semanticists and foment a would-be
revolution by claiming that linguists should follow a path different from the path that they
had been on all while offering several inaccessible technical innovations for the model.
In doing as such, Chomsky seems to hollow out the impetus for generative grammar, all
while solidifying the ideology of autonomous syntax.
As I explain in the introduction, with “Remarks” Chomsky attempts to put the
brakes on the unconstrained search for a unified deep, abstract level of meaning (a major
goal of generative semanticists, but not exclusively generative semanticists).139 In
While not published until 1970, “Remarks” developed out of Chomsky’s lectures at MIT gave
after after his return in 1967 (Newmeyer [1986: 85]).
139
While the search for a unified, abstract, and deep level of meaning had been a goal of the
generative semanticists, the pursuit of bedrock deep structures had been a point of disciplinary
identity for many in the field at the time, not just generative semanticists.
138
Oenbring / 136
“Remarks” Chomsky contrasts the transformationalist hypothesis, endorsed by the
generative semanticists, with the lexicalist hypothesis (a notion that Chomskyan Whig
historians read as a fulfillment of movements originally sponsored by Aspects [see, for
example, Jackendoff’s X-bar Theory]). Chomsky endorses a pursuit of the lexical
hypothesis. Basically the lexical hypothesis states that nominalized verbs such as proof
(which we might see as a something that has come from the verb to prove) should not be
decomposed (i.e., one should not claim that these verbs are placed somewhere lower in
the tree at deep structure and then move to their surface structure and change into nouns
by a transformation). To back up his claim, Chomsky’s primary evidence comes from the
differing acceptable distributions of derived nominals140 (e.g., proof) and gerundive
nominals (e.g., providing). By suggesting that these nominalized verbs should be left
alone, treating them not as the products of transformations but as individual lexical items
“with fixed selectional and strict sub-categorization features,” Chomsky, however, seems
to be arguing against one of the core ideas of his project. Rather, he argues that the
relatedness between the noun and verb forms should be handled by another mechanism
than a transformation. In this regard, “Remarks” endorses a return to ‘common sense’.
Also in “Remarks” Chomsky introduces X-bar theory to generative inquiry, a
theory that became institutionalized in large part due to Chomsky’s authority despite
limited empirical support. As presented in “Remarks,” X-bar theory is a unified schema
of notation covering syntactic hierarchies in noun phrases (NP), adjective phrases (AP),
140
It is a bit confusing that Chomsky uses the term derived here, as he is claiming that these
nouns are not made by transformations.
Oenbring / 137
and verb phrases (VP). The node immediately above the head (the noun, verb, or
adjective) is the N’, V’, or A’ (pronounced N-bar, etc.). The node immediately above
N’, V’, or A’ is an N”, V”, or A” (pronounced N-double bar). One should note, however,
that Chomsky endorses this change because it seems to reduce the complexity of model,
not because of extensive empirical support.141 Nevertheless, technically stated, the
motivation for X-bar theory is that it displays parallelism of argument structure for
differing forms like destroy and destruct.
As X-bar syntax is not clearly a substantive theory, Chomsky suggests precedent
for the model in Harris’ work. Chomsky reminds us that “a structure of the sort just
outlined is reminiscent of the system of phrase structure analysis develop by Harris in the
1940’s” (1970 [1972: 54]). Chomsky also reminds us that the Xsuperscript convention stems
from Harris, continuing “in Harris’ system, statements applying to categories represented
in the form Xn (n a numeral) applied also to categories represented in the form Xm (m ˂
n)” (1972: 54).142
Chomsky’s propositions regarding X-bar theory are given their fullest exposition in
Jackendoff’s X-bar Syntax. Jackendoff’s book is quite interesting from a rhetorical perspective in
that it cites Chomsky’s work as if it is holy writ.
142
Just as Catholics prefer to conceptualize the modifications of Catholic dogma and hierarchy
that occurred as a response to the claims of the Protestant Reformers as instead occurring sui
generis (i.e., they prefer to understand the reforms as a ‘Catholic Reformation’), Chomsky, in
“Deep Structure” and “Some Empirical Issues,” only rarely acknowledges the influence of
generative semanticists in “Remarks.” (Indeed, Chomsky’s citations of the generative semantics
movement are rare in remarks, usually occurring in footnotes.) This did not fail to draw the ire of
the generative semanticists. George Lakoff’s then spouse and fellow generative semanticist,
Robin Lakoff has, for example, suggested that “one reads ‘Remarks on Nominalization’ without
a clue that the description there of the lexicon and of deep structure existed … and was developed
only because GS [generative semanticists] pushed Chomsky to redefine his position – quite
radically” (Robin Lakoff, cited in Harris [1993: 141]).
141
Oenbring / 138
After their original publications, Chomsky republished all three of “Remarks,”
“Deep Structure, Surface Structure,” and “Some Empirical Issues” in a single 1972
volume Studies on Semantics in Generative Grammar, condensing his three most
important pieces arguing against generative semantics all while moving the field to the
extended standard theory into a single volume/volley. The rhetorical goal of the single
volume is to make the case that the field should follow him along in a revolution within a
revolution. Indeed, Chomsky makes it clear that he is attempting to foment a rupture,
stating directly in his genealogy of the field in the preface that:
the three essays that follow take as their point of departure the formulation of
grammatical theory presented in such work as J. J. Katz and P.M. Postal, An
Integrated Theory of Linguistic Descriptions, 1964, and Chomsky, Aspects of the
Theory of Syntax, 1965. For ease of exposition, I refer to this formulation as the
“standard theory”. The essays deal with problems that arise within this
framework, and present a revision of the standard theory to an “extended standard
theory” (EST). (5).
It is interesting that Chomsky would publish all three pieces together as a single
rhetorical volley despite the fact that the three essays contradict one another.
Nevertheless, if number of reviews is a good indicator of influence, Studies was a
success; it led to 14 reviews in journals of broad scope and influence (Koerner and
Tajima 52).
With Chomsky himself criticizing the pursuit of ever more deep structures — a
pursuit that had probably always been quixotic — generative inquiry lost what had been
Oenbring / 139
up to then its prevailing alluring idea (that is to say, generative inquiry had lost an
important element of its identity). What Chomsky left in its place after the EST essays
was a syntactic theory that was both more abstract, formal, and seemingly unmotivated
by empirical reality (e.g., X-bar syntax) but that in other regards was more commonsense
(i.e., lexicalism). Whereas the search of an elegant way to deal with meaning had been an
ultimate goal of inquiry in the Aspects period, after the EST essays, generative techniques
for dealing with meaning were quirkier and more theory internal. Similarly, whereas
earlier syntactic formalisms were largely motivated by the pursuit of deep structure — a
layer that might be construed as explanation, they now were seemingly motivated by
syntactic patterns in and of themselves. (Nevertheless, Chomsky himself has never said
that deep structure explains anything.) Indeed, although generative syntacticians retained
the claim that they were in pursuit of structures in the mind, syntactic formalisms now
could be motivated by nothing other than syntactic formalisms. That is to say, syntax was
increasingly becoming an undergirding ideology — an ideology by turns both implicit
within theories but unstated and at other times explicitly formulated.
The Rhetoric of the “Conditions” Framework
In the later days of the extended standard theory (from 1973 to 1979), much of
Chomsky’s work was focused on articulating formal, theory-internal, abstract and
oftentimes byzantine conditions for interactions of elements within syntactic trees.143
143
Some historians of generative grammar give this period the label the revised extended
standard theory (REST), but this is not a widely used label nor is it a label that Chomsky
sponsored. Thus, I shall not use it.
Oenbring / 140
This focus is clearest in Chomsky’s 1973 and 1976 papers “Conditions on
Transformations,”144 and “Conditions on Rules of Grammar,” both later reprinted in
Chomsky’s 1977 book Essays on Form and Interpretation. With abstraction, formalism,
and theory-massaging valued more than descriptive coverage (or direct evidence as that
related to observational adequacy), phonetically-null tree elements spread like wildfire.
Following the goal of making the theory more abstract in the interest of making it simpler
(at least in theory), Chomsky, notably, attempted to distill all movement rules into a
single rule, first called Move NP (1976) later renamed and tinkered with to become
Move-α (1980).
With the tradition of the extended standard theory an established landmark among
generative grammarians, Chomsky would now turn to that label as a way to emphasize
the continuity of the entire project of generative grammar. Chomsky begins Essays on
Form by stating that “the essays that follow fall within the framework of the so-called
‘extended standard theory’ (EST). More generally, the framework of assumptions,
methodological and substantive, is essentially as presented in my Aspects of the Theory of
Syntax and related work” (1). As this quote suggests, although Chomsky makes it clear
that the work presented is part of the EST, he, however, also emphasizes the book’s
continuity with Aspects.
A good example of one of the conditions of later EST is the Complementizer
Substitution Universal presented in “Conditions on Transformations.” The
Complementizer Substitution Universal states that “only languages with clause-initial
“Conditions on Transformations” stems originally from a 1969 conference paper (Newmeyer
1980 [1986: 157]).
144
Oenbring / 141
COMP permit a COMP-substitution transformation” (1973 [1977:83]).145 Note the
highly theory-internal nature of this definition. That is to say, the definition is laden with
terms that only have meaning within the boundaries of generative grammar.146
As this example Complementizer Substitution Universal suggests, later EST began
to take more seriously the diversity of human languages. Chomsky himself continued to
make bold statements for the program of generative grammar based largely on a small
number of constructions with evidence taken exclusively from English. Nevertheless,
later EST is generally credited as beginning the turn in generative descriptions toward a
search for more general principles of human language, with the differences between
human languages accounted for by parameters. (This is a rhetorical dichotomy that
would become more defined [and, indeed, take center stage] during the Principles and
Parameters framework.) Chomsky notes in “Conditions on Rules of Grammar” that:
Even if conditions are language – or rule-particular, there are limits to the possible
diversity of grammar. Thus, such conditions can be regarded as parameters that
have to be fixed (for the language, or for particular rules, in the worst case), in
language learning. We would then raise the question how the class of grammars
so constituted, with rules that lack expressive power but parameters to be fixed
independently, compares with the class of grammars permitted under a theory that
145
Of course, Chomsky was not the first to propose a conditions-type framework. The notion of
‘derivational constraints’ had been proposed by Ross. Chomsky’s early reception of conditions
frameworks was, however, frosty at best. For example, Chomsky argues in “Some Empirical
Issues” that “everyone would agree that unless further elaborated, the suggestion that grammars
contain “derivational constraints” is vacuous. Any imaginable rule can be described as a
‘constraint on derivations’” (“Some Empirical Issues” 73).
146
Despite Chomsky’s claim that this condition is a universal, there is little evidence that this
theory has been tested on more than a handful of human languages.
Oenbring / 142
permits articulation of conditions on application within the formulation of the
rules themselves. It has often been supposed that conditions on application of
rules must be quite general, even universal, to be significant, but that need not be
the case if establishing a “parametric” condition permits us to reduce substantially
the class of possible rules. (175)
As this quote suggests, although conditions could be formulated based on evidence from
individual languages, Chomsky argues that these specific conditions should not be
understood as unique quirks of individual languages. Rather each properly understood
condition brings linguists closer and closer to a lush description of Universal Grammar.
The Extended Standard Theory and the Rhetoric of Falsifiability
While Chomsky and his followers had built the case for generative grammar in
part based on the claim that it, unlike post-Bloomfieldian theories of syntax, proposed
explicit, formal theories of language that could be refuted by counter-examples, in the
later days of EST Chomsky began reduce his emphasis on falsifiability as a criterion for
adjudicating the validity of models. Due to the “logically necessary” (1977: 2) nature of
UG, counter-examples to rules are thus not enough to prove conditions false.147
Chomsky states, for example, in the introduction to Essays on Form and Interpretation
that:
It is also worth stressing that a condition on rules can neither be confirmed nor
refuted directly by presented phenomena. Particular observations may be used to
As we shall see later in this study, appeals to the “logically necessary” nature of Universal
Grammar have become more common under the Minimalist Program.
147
Oenbring / 143
test postulated rules, but only rules, not observations, serve as confirming or
refuting instances for conditions on rules. This is a simple point of logic, often
overlooked. To support or refute a proposed condition, it does not suffice to cite
examples of grammatical or ungrammatical constructions from some language or
other informant judgments or observed phenomena. The empirical facts do
indeed bear on the correctness of a theory of conditions on rules, but only
indirectly, through the medium of proposed rule systems that do or do not
conform to the conditions. … The atomistic approach of much linguistic work,
citing phenomena and generalizations from a variety of languages but not
proposing partial rule systems that conform to some proposed theory of UG,
whatever its value, is simply not very helpful in the present context. (21)
As this quote suggests, what is important to Chomsky is now “rules” not “observed
phenomena.” Moreover, “to support or refute a proposed condition, it does not suffice to
cite examples of grammatical or ungrammatical constructions.” In effect what Chomsky
is claiming is that supposed counter-examples to a model are not of interest unless they
propose their own elegant theory that can replace the previous theory. This is, of course,
“a simple point of logic.”
Recall, however, that in the early days of generative grammar, Chomsky and his
followers suggested that what distinguished generative grammar from the postBloomfieldian program was that it, unlike the post-Bloomfieldian linguistics, makes
explicit theoretical claims about language that can be refuted with counterevidence.
Oenbring / 144
Compare the above quote from Essays on Form with the following passage from SPE,
published a mere nine years before:
One of the best reason for presenting a theory of a particular language in the
precise form of a generative grammar, or for presenting a hypothesis concerning
general linguistic theory in very explicit terms, is that only such precise and
explicit formulation can lead to the discovery of serious inadequacies and to and
understanding of how they can be remedied. In contrast, a system of transcription
or terminology, a list of examples, or a rearrangement of the data in a corpus is
not ‘refutable’ by evidence … It is just for this reason that such exercises are of
very limited interest for linguistics as a field of rational inquiry. (ix)
Whereas post-Bloomfieldian linguistics is merely a “rearrangement of the data” that is
not “‘refutable’ by evidence,” generative grammar, according to SPE, offers “precise and
explicit formulation” that “can lead to the discovery of serious inadequacies.”
This is a clear case of Chomsky changing the rules in the middle of the game. In
effect, what Chomsky was offering in his later deemphasizing of potential for
falsification as criterion was a rhetorical buffer. With generative grammar the guiding
paradigm at several prominent institutions (and numerous careers wagered on the reality
of generative descriptions), generative grammarians could now claim that other theories
must be determined based on broader criteria, rather than their seeming empirical
adequacy. What’s more, by placing more and more emphasis on the need for elegance in
models rather than on the empirical adequacy of models (e.g., X-bar syntax: elegant, but
not falsifiable), with ratings of elegance relying largely upon the authority of the
Oenbring / 145
researcher for their success, Chomsky, due in large part to his own authority, has been
able to assure the continuity of the community of generative grammarians; they follow
him.
The Extended Standard Theory and Autonomous Syntax
I have suggested the notion of autonomous syntax became both an implicit
ideology and an explicitly-stated organizing thesis/ point of identity for generative
grammarians under EST. This, needless to say, deserves more thorough explanation.
Broadly stated, the thesis of autonomous syntax states that the proper object of the study
of human language is the interaction of abstract elements among hierarchic syntactic
trees, with no little to no attention paid to any of the following: the function for which
the language is being used; the specific thematic functions or meaning of the elements
within the syntactic strings; the social situation in which the language is being used;
register, social variation, or genre; how the elements of the string relate to other elements
in the discourse; the mind’s conceptual processing of sentences; or even frequencies of
usage of particular terms or strings of syntax. The goal of autonomous syntax is — as
Searle states in his hilariously-titled review of Chomsky’s 1975 book Reflections on
Language “The Rules of the Language Game”148 — to describe language without
“reference to meaning or to function or any other non-syntactical notion: all the rules of
syntax of all natural languages are in this sense formal” (1119).
Searle is, for certain, invoking the later Wittgenstein’s notion of language games here. One
also gets the sense of hustle from the language game.
148
Oenbring / 146
Recall that the first chapter of Syntactic Structures is entitled “The Autonomy of
Grammar,” and its basic function is to emphasize that grammatical judgments of wellformedness are distinct from what would later be called pragmatic judgments of wellformedness. That is to say, the notion of autonomous syntax has played a real role in the
legitimating of generative syntax as a unique field of inquiry since near the beginning. In
early days of generative grammar, however, Chomsky had not yet extensively articulated
these externalities to ‘scientific’ linguistics mentioned above. Nor had he explicitly
formulated autonomous syntax as an organizing thesis. (What’s more, Chomsky did not
yet have the authority to exclude these other interests as non-scientific.) With “Remarks”
and other early EST works hollowing out the organizing ideals of the Aspects program,
what seemed to be left increasingly was syntax for the sake of syntax. At the same time,
the model was becoming, as I have explained, increasingly abstract, seemingly immune
to refutation, and inaccessible to outsiders. This led to revolt. Indeed, by many accounts
the mid-seventies were a nadir in Chomsky’s prestige (see, for example, Searle’s review
for an example of these sorts of critiques).
The notion of autonomous syntax, as explained above, is difficult to defend, and
Chomsky himself has had to deftly maneuver around it. While the notion of autonomous
syntax was clearly present implicitly in earlier versions of generative grammar, under
EST Chomsky offered up autonomous syntax as an organizing thesis and point of identity
for generative grammarians. For example, in the paper “Questions of Form and
Interpretation,” originally delivered at the 1974 Linguistic Society of America
Conference, later reprinted in Essays on Form and Interpretation, Chomsky suggests that
Oenbring / 147
“one might propose a ‘thesis of autonomy of formal grammar’ of varying degrees of
strength” (42).149 Similarly, Chomsky directly states in “Conditions on Rules of
Grammar” that “implicit in this presentation is a certain version of the ‘thesis of
autonomy of syntax’ (cf. Chomsky [1975a])” (166). By explicitly formulating and
promoting notions of autonomous syntax, Chomsky was, in effect, offering a guiding
idea for his followers to use to distinguish us from them.
Despite its clearly ideological nature,150 the notion of autonomous syntax has been
taken up by many generative grammarians within the fold; autonomous syntax has
become a rallying point for many generative grammarians, with autonomous syntax
understood as the backbone of ‘scientific’ autonomous linguistics (see, for example,
Newmeyer’s The Politics of Linguistics). Although it has become an operating principle
and point of identity for many generative grammarians, Chomsky has, however, routinely
disavowed the notion of autonomous syntax since the mid-seventies.151 (This is no doubt
due in part to the clearly ideological and indefensible nature of a pure autonomy thesis.)
For example, in the introduction to 1977’s LSLT, Chomsky suggests that “thesis of
‘autonomy of syntax’ ... is allegedly in dispute, but the thesis itself is rarely formulated”
(21). More recently, Chomsky has denied that he ever supported the notion of
autonomous syntax. Barsky (1997), for example, cites personal correspondence from
Chomsky in which Chomsky claims that “it’s a logical impossibility for Searle, or
In the same essay, however, Chomsky makes it clear that “no one … has ever doubted” that
there exist “highly systematic connections” between form and meaning.
150
By ideological here I mean driven by a mathematical/scientific ideology of syntax.
151
In this regard, one might say that Chomsky is leaving those who support the autonomy thesis
as a point of disciplinary identity high and dry.
149
Oenbring / 148
anyone, to differ with my ‘thesis of the “autonomy of syntax,”’ because I’ve never held
any such thesis. There is a very large ‘debate’ about it, with many people attacking the
thesis (but without telling us what it is) and no one defending it, surely not me, because I
have no idea what it is” (cited in Barksy [1997]; personal correspondence 31 Mar. 1995).
One might, of course, read this as an example a hegemonic cultural formation denying
that it has an undergirding ideology — or even that it has power.
Principles and Parameters: The Second Revolution
By many accounts, Chomsky was on the ropes in the late seventies. Indeed, the
seventies had seen the emergence of a number of schools of syntactic analysis
questioning the foundations of Chomskyan generative grammar. Theories developed
questioning transformations (Gazdar et al.’s generalized phrase structure grammar), the
assumed homogeneity of linguistic communities (sociolinguistics),152 and the lack of
attention to the functional/pragmatic side of syntax (Dik’s functional grammar and
Halliday et al.’s systemic functional grammar). And there were those bitter
disenfranchised generative semanticists still hanging around. What’s more, the later
extended standard theory presented in works like 1973’s “Conditions on
Transformations” and his 1977’s “Filters and Control” (with Howard Lasnik) was highly
theory-internal, technical, and less popular among generative linguists than earlier
incarnations of Chomsky’s work. For certain, in part Chomsky’s problems with the
mature extended standard theory were rhetorical. “Conditions” — and even more
152
Of course, sociolinguistics did not originate in the seventies, but certainly became a more
important player then (see, for example, Labov [1966]).
Oenbring / 149
Chomsky’s last publication in EST, 1980’s “On Binding” — are largely a laundry list of
abstract, technical, and specifically-formulated conditions with examples coming largely
from English.
What Chomsky needed was another revolution, and he, no surprise, was able to
produce one. What Chomsky produced was the framework he first called GovernmentBinding but has since relabeled Principles and Parameters (what I will refer to as a
whole as GB/P and P). The ‘revolutionary’ text largely responsible for this shift is
Chomsky’s 1981 book Lectures on Government and Binding, a text to which the same
caveats apply as those I have suggested in my analysis of Chomsky’s other revolutionary
texts. The research program initiated by Lectures, GB/P and P, quickly became — no
doubt due in part to its undergirding rhetoric — the dominant organizing approach among
generative grammarians. Although GB/P and P work continues to this day, many
generative syntacticians have refocused their work under the so-called ‘economy’
constraints on Chomsky’s Minimalist Program. Due to the success of Lectures (and due
to the emphasis that Chomsky himself has placed on GB/P and P), the shift initiated by
Lectures is sometimes referred to as the ‘second Chomskyan revolution’. Nevertheless,
Lectures has been, by any account, a rhetorical success, a rhetorical success that I shall
attempt to account for in the following pages.
Decidedly cross- and trans-linguistic in focus, the GB/P and P approach seeks, in
theory, to account for the syntactic complexity of all human languages by uncovering
both universal principles (i.e., constraints on syntactic construction shared by all human
languages) and language-specific parameters, usually understood as binaries. Note this
Oenbring / 150
clear (read: rhetorical) binary between principles and parameters. The theory of language
acquisition promoted by GB/P and P can be imagined as follows: while any human child
can, at birth, learn any human language, the child’s being surrounded with their native
tongue causes a series of binary switches to be set in the child’s brain producing the
grammar of their native tongue.
Chomsky suggests in Lectures that:
Each of the systems of [language] has associated with it certain parameters, which
are set in terms of data presented to the person acquiring a particular language.
The grammar of a language can be regarded as a particular set of values for these
parameters, while the overall system of rules, principles, and parameters is UG,
which we may to take to be one element of the human biological endowment,
namely, the “language faculty.” (7)
Note the clear focus on accounting for the differences between human languages and on
the acquisition of language in the above quote. Indeed, the framework proposed by
Lectures succeeded no doubt in large part due to the fact that it offered a clearly
formulated framework for accounting for syntactic patterns in different languages; it
gave generative grammarians an institutionalized framework to apply to other
languages.153 Lectures, furthermore, continued the trajectory began with work in later
EST of actually giving examples from languages other than English.154
Chomsky claims that “study of closely related languages that differ in some clustering of
properties is particularly valuable for the opportunities it affords to identify and clarify the
parameters of UG that permit a range of variation in the proposed principles” (6).
154
Indeed, prior to late EST, Chomsky’s only work offering any examples in a language other
than English was Morphophonemics of Modern Hebrew (his master’s essay).
153
Oenbring / 151
Although Chomsky had claimed that generative grammar had clear implications
for the study of language acquisition since the sixties, GB/P and P offered the first clear
model within generative grammar for (at least in theory) accounting for how children
learn different languages. This emphasis has secured Chomsky’s place within the field
of language acquisition. (Indeed, the 2004 reader First Language Acquisition: the
Essential Readings includes three separate essays by Chomsky.)
Perhaps the clearest example of one of these so-called parameters is the so-called
pro-drop parameter relating to whether languages require phonetically-realized personal
pronouns. The pro-drop example, originally stemming from Rizzi (1980), is invoked by
Chomksy’s Lectures and many other introductions to the principles and parameters
theory no doubt for its seeming ease and elegance of explanation. (In this regard, I am
borrowing a rhetorical maneuver from Chomsky in using pro-drop as my example of a
parameter.) Basically, the pro-drop parameter means this: whereas in English to say the
sentence I am hungry, one must say the I, in languages like Spanish and Italian, the
personal pronoun is not required in normal day-to-day speech (thus, tengo hambre is
sufficient). Hence, we can say that Italian and Spanish allow pro-drop, but English
doesn’t. Of course, as one can imagine, there seem to be innumerable parameters in
different human languages. Nevertheless, it is a fairly standard convention in
contemporary research articles in generative grammar to propose one or more of these
parameters. 155
155
The Principles and Parameters approach has, however, run into serious problems in the past
decades. The most serious problem with the Principles and Parameters approach has been the
astronomical number of possible parameters suggested by syntactic theorists. As Lightfoot (1999)
Oenbring / 152
Building a historical narrative for the emergence of the theory he is promoting,
Chomsky suggests in Lectures that “in early work in generative grammar it was assumed,
as in traditional grammar, that there are rules, such as ‘passive,’ ‘relativization,’
‘question-formation,’ etc. … In subsequent work … these ‘rules’ are decomposed into
the more fundamental elements of the subsystems of rules and principles” (7). Claiming
the Prague school phonologists as venerable precursors, Chomsky argues that the move
that he is endorsing “is reminiscent of the move from phonemes to features in the
phonology of the Prague school, though in the present case the ‘features’ (e.g., the
principles of Case, government and binding theory) are considerably more abstract” (7).
This time, however, Chomsky’s claimed lineage from a venerable precursor is accurate;
Chomsky is correct to suggest that his interest in abstract features reflect concerns
stemming from Prague school phonology.
Whereas the Conditions framework was mired in problems attempting to create
specifically-formulated rules that could stand up to even a meager amount of intra and
inter-linguistic testing, GB/ P and P moved the entire system into a higher order of
abstraction, thereby removing the need to offer specifically-formulated rules and
conditions. Unlike in the Conditions framework, where specific rules are postulated that
define possible projections and movements, the GB/ P and P framework does not see the
need to offer specific, presumably refutable, rules. This is due to the claimed “logically
notes, if, indeed, parameters are binaries, postulating a mere 33 parameters would generate
approx 8.6 billion potential human languages — more than the total number of people on the
planet (259). This raises the question: how can a system that generates more possible languages
than there are people on the planet in any way be said to offer constraints on human languages
and a child’s learning thereof? Lightfoot is, moreover, not optimistic that all the syntactic
complexities of all human languages could ever be accounted for in 30-40 parameters.
Oenbring / 153
necessary” nature of a principled and mathematically-elegant UG. That is to say, the
grammars of particular languages under GB/P and P in and of themselves are no longer
of particular interest (those grammars being in themselves merely the residue of
history156), with the goal being the pursuit of vaguely-defined principles (and parameters)
of language.
Like later EST, the framework articulated by Lectures is highly technical and
rather abstract. GB/P and P keeps much of the technical apparatus of later EST,
including all of the following elements: the notions of logical form, X-bar theory, Moveα, COMP, and numerous phonetically null elements like PRO. Chomsky’s prose follows
later EST in its extensive use of Greek letters and intialisms. The following passage from
Lectures serves as a good example:
Base rules generate D-structures (deep structures) through insertion of lexical
items into structures generated by [the categorical component of the syntax], in
accordance with their feature structure. These are mapped to S-structure by the
rule Move-α, leaving traces coindexed with their antecedents; this rule constitutes
the transformational component (iib), and may also appear in the PF- and LFcomponents. Thus the syntax generates Structures which are assigned PF- and LFrepresentations” (5)
As this quote suggests, Chomsky reintroduces and relabels the notions deep structure and
surface structure in Lectures, this time calling them D-structures and S-structures (no
doubt to avoid reliving the contentious debates over notions of deep structure).
Indeed, Chomsky notes in Lectures that “existing languages are a small and in part accidental
sample of possible human languages” (1).
156
Oenbring / 154
While Lectures keeps much of the technical apparatus of the mature extended
standard theory, Chomsky makes clear that he is promoting a distinct system; he makes it
clear that the current system entails a break from EST.157 Accordingly, Chomsky uses
visionary language in the world creation pages of Lectures. Chomsky, for example, states
that “I think that we are, in fact, beginning to approach a grasp of certain basic principles
of grammar at what may be the appropriate level of abstraction” (2). One of these notions
at “the appropriate level of abstraction” that Chomsky introduces is the divide between
core grammar and marked periphery, a dichotomy that he drew in his 1980 essay first
presenting the notion of binding theory “On Binding.” The end result, Chomsky claims,
is a model that is an “idealized – but not unrealistic – theory of language acquisition” (8).
As I have suggested, Chomsky’s later EST articles are somewhat rhetorically
confused, consisting largely of laundry lists of abstract conditions. This is not the case
with Lectures. Chomsky in Lectures articulates a tight set of foundational assumptions
for GB/P and P, even going so far as to present what he claims to be the unique
components of the theory in list form. Chomsky lists the following “subcomponents of
the rule system”:
(1) (i) lexicon
(ii) syntax
(a) Categorical component
(b) Transformational component
(iii) PF-component
157
As I suggest later, Chomsky does much of this through his negotiation of the labels he uses for
the various theories.
Oenbring / 155
(iv) LF-component (5)
And the following “subsystems of principles” on the same page:
(2) (i) bounding theory
(ii) government theory
(iii) θ-theory
(iv) binding theory
(v) case theory
(vi) control theory (5)
Indeed, Chomsky makes clear the specific components of the system he is trying to
promote in Lectures.
As a whole Chomsky seems much more confident in Lectures than he is in the
early texts of EST to claim as his prerogative the authority to move the theory according
to own intuitions. With the field having been through Chomsky’s uprooting of the
assumptions of the standard theory only to replace them with the assumptions of the
extended standard theory — with the field having been through a rupture ritual — all
Chomsky seemingly needed to do was play his rupture card. (Of course, this is hyperbole
to some extent. However, it is clear the Chomsky is less cautious in his rhetorical
construction of the GB/P and P revolution than he was in his movement from the
standard theory to the extended standard theory.) Chomsky’s rhetorical maneuvers in his
attempts to foment and shore up what became the GB/ P and P revolution in Lectures and
later works is what I shall analyze in the coming paragraphs.
Oenbring / 156
The Rhetorical Construction of the GB/P and P Revolution
Lectures on Government and Binding begins with a dual-barreled claim by
Chomsky that he is the ultimate origin of the theories presented in the book, coupled with
an acknowledgment of the influence of other scholars. Chomsky states on the first page
of the preface that:
The material that follows is based on lectures I gave at the GLOW158 conference
and workshop held at the Scuola Normale Superiore in Pisa in April 1979. The
material was then reworked in the course lectures at MIT in 1979-80, where I was
fortunate to have the participation of a number of visitors from other institutions
in the U.S. and Europe … The material presented here borrows extensively from
recent and current work in ways that will not be adequately indicated;
specifically, from the work of linguists of the GLOW circle who have created
research centers of such remarkable vitality and productivity in France, the
Netherlands, Italy and elsewhere. (vi, emphasis added)
Chomsky’s work to pair an authorship claim with a claim that the book “borrows
extensively from recent and current work” is, no doubt, done to build the appearance of
consensus; Chomsky claims that the findings presented in the book are accepted by a
broad scholarly community in order to undergird the novel set of theoretical constructs
presented in the book. What’s more, by suggesting that the influence of other scholars
“will not be adequately indicated,” Chomsky is engaging in a clear sleight of hand;
Chomsky is suggesting that the reader should infer that other scholars support the
158
Generative Linguistics in the Old World
Oenbring / 157
findings that he reports in the text even if he does not offer a source to support his
claims.159
In the beginning of first main body chapter “Outline of the Theory of Core
Grammar,” Chomsky avoids using the term extended standard theory as a landmark for
the would-be revolution he is crafting.160 However, Chomsky suggests that the
framework presented in the book developed out of Reflections on Language (1975) and
Essays on Form and Interpretation (1977) (the two most important texts of later EST).
Specifically, Chomsky states that:
I will assume the general framework presented in Chomsky (1975; 1977a,b;
1980b) and work cited there. A more extensive discussion of certain of the more
technical notions appears in my paper “On Binding” (Chomsky, 1980a;
henceforth, OB). … It is based on certain principles that were in part implicit in
this earlier work, but that were not given in the form that I will develop here. In
the course of this discussion, I will consider a number of conceptual and empirical
problems that arise in a theory of the OB type and will suggest a somewhat
different approach that assigns a more central role to the notion of government; let
us call the alternative approach that will be developed here a “governmentbinding (GB) theory” for expository purposes. (1)
What’s more, as the book emphasizes cross-linguistic work, Chomsky’s deference to
European scholars makes sense; it is in his best interest to have the Europeans on board with his
framework.
160
Chomsky does, however, use the term extended standard theory later in the first chapter,
suggesting that “the approaches that seem to me most promising fall within the general
framework of the so-called ‘Extended Standard Theory’” (4).
159
Oenbring / 158
As we seen in this quote, Chomsky emphasizes continuity of the model presented in
Lectures with four texts that themselves claimed to be part of the EST, all while avoiding
using the notion extended standard theory. At several points in the text, Chomsky uses
his 1980 paper “On Binding” as both a place to define the program of “governmentbinding” against and as a neutral landmark in the development of the theory. 161 (Also
note that Chomsky in this quote first refers to a government-binding theory rather than
just government-binding theory. [Recall that this is essentially the same way he
introduced the notion of the standard theory, with its function being a modesty topos.])
Within five years after the publication of Lectures, Chomsky published two rather
short texts laying out sets of specific technical assumptions for the GB/P and P program:
1982’s Some Concepts and Consequences of the Theory of Government and Binding and
1986’s Barriers.162 Although less frequently cited than Lectures, the rhetorical purpose of
these texts is clear: to outline the concepts of a new framework in a much clearer and
more concise manner than Lectures. While Barriers includes more novel material, the
goal of both texts is clearly to lay out and institutionalize the precise assumptions and
metalanguage of the GB/P and P framework.
As I have demonstrated, it is clearly important to Chomsky to manage the names
of theories. Accordingly, Chomsky states on the first page of Some Concepts that:
I would like to sketch some features of an approach to linguistic theory that has
been slowly coming into focus in the past few years and that has considerable
Chomsky’s work to define the program he is presenting against a not-so-clearly important
work is, of course, reminiscent of rhetorical maneuvers he engaged in Syntactic Structures.
162
Similarly, 1966’s Topics in the Theory of Generative Grammar seems designed to summarize
goals and methods of Chomsky’s mid-60s methods for an audience of linguists.
161
Oenbring / 159
promise, I believe. Because of the crucial roles played by the notions of
government and binding, the approach is sometimes called government-binding
(GB) theory. I will refer to it by that name here, though it develops directly and
without a radical break from earlier work in transformational generative grammar,
in particular from research that falls within the framework of the Extended
Standard Theory (EST). (3)
As this quote suggests, Chomsky attempts to solidify the theories of language promoted
by Lectures under the label government-binding theory, while still emphasizing the
program’s continuity with EST. Some Concepts then overviews the rule systems and
systems of principles presented in Lectures with only some minor tinkering.
Identity Work and the GB/P and P Revolution
Chomsky’s original title for GB/P and P “government-binding” foregrounded a
specific, tight set of interactions within hierarchical syntactic trees: the relations of
government and binding.163 (One could, of course, write a whole paper on the
authoritarian notions built into some terminology in generative grammar, but that is
outside of the scope of this study.) By 1986, however, Chomsky would rename the
program started with Lectures ‘Principles and Parameters’, with the notion of principles
and parameters being a much more vaguely-defined yet much more alluring notion.
Chomsky states, for example, in Barriers that “I will assume here the 'principles and
163
Simplified to its core, government can be understood as a position of mutual dominance (more
technically stated mutual c-command) of elements in syntactic trees. Similarly, binding can be
defined as non-mutual dominance of coindexed elements (like pronouns and their antecedents).
Oenbring / 160
parameters’ approach to linguistic theory outlined in Chomsky 1981 and related work”
(2). That is to say, Chomsky shifts the label for the GB/P and P program from a tight,
distinct set of relationships, to a theory of much broader scope. (In fact, by 1991
Chomsky would claim that “such terms as ‘government-binding theory’ should be
abandoned [and] should never have been used in the first place” [3]).164
Chomsky’s ex post facto emphasis on what proved to be the boldest and most
captivating element of the theory presented in Lectures is, it seems, a rhetorical
maneuver, a rhetorical maneuver meant to secure the place of GB/P and P framework as
the overarching framework that linguists operate under. That is to say, with other
linguists inspired by his work also searching for principles and parameters, Chomsky’s
emphasis on the principles and parameters dichotomy in effect interpolated those
linguists’ work under his own program. In this regard, Chomsky’s after the fact assertion
of the importance principles and parameters as the core claim of the GB/P and P theory
is analogous to his attempts in the late sixties to emphasize the central place of the notion
of deep structure in the Aspects model; in each case he attempted to place emphasis on
bold and captivating notions, notions that were quickly becoming the lynchpins of the
disciplinary imagination of generative studies at the time. The end result of these
Chomsky’s suggestion here is part of a broader suggestion that linguists should avoid
expansive theory labeling. As Chomsky makes clear, what catalyzes him to make this suggestion
is his discomfort with the notion of ‘Chomskyan linguistics’ (indeed, the name of the volume the
piece is printed in is entitled The Chomskyan Turn); Chomsky is attempting to normalize
generative inquiry: to make it unauthored. Nevertheless, Chomsky’s suggestion seems largely
disingenuous. After all, a mere two years later Chomsky would attempt to foment a change to the
Minimalist Program. It is, furthermore, worth noting that the term he critiques is governmentbinding and not principles and parameters.
164
Oenbring / 161
maneuvers was the same: Chomsky built boundaries on the intellectual community of
generative linguists more or less associated with his own name and person.
Conclusion
Chomsky’s shifting genealogies — his shifting landmarks of identity — for the
field of linguistics at the beginning of his books must each be recognized as strategic,
rhetorical formulations meant to mould the horizon of identity for the field of generative
grammar (and linguistics as a whole). As I have demonstrated in this chapter, early in his
revolutions Chomsky has started off by claiming the authority of established practice and
tradition (i.e., pre-Bloomfieldian precursors, the Aspects model, and the Extended
Standard Theory), only to later shift up temporarily the landmarks he uses in his
genealogies of linguistic theory once he had led the field to follow him down a line of
inquiry. That is to say, Chomsky has attempted to claim continuity before he has claimed
rupture. These later shifts forward in the horizon of identity for the field serve important
rhetorical purposes; they create the impression of progress in the field all while
reinscribing Chomsky’s place as the core theorist in the discipline. (Indeed, we should
not underestimate the effects of Chomsky’s work to manage what texts and scholars the
field traces its identity back to. This includes spending a not insignificant among of time
managing the names [read: not the core methods] of the theory programs that linguists
operate under.)
As I have shown, the time and care that Chomsky has placed in crafting each of
his revolutions has decreased over time; he has become increasingly bold in his use of his
revolution cards. Whereas the first Chomskyan revolution took place over a decade
Oenbring / 162
(from the mid fifties to the mid sixties) and the second took place over approximately
half that time (from the late sixties to the early seventies), the third was catalyzed largely
by a single book. What’s more, although in each sub-revolution Chomsky has proposed
new technical models, the most important elements of these sub-revolutions have been
Chomsky’s rhetorical manipulations of large-scale disciplinary identity. As I have noted,
in the sixties Chomsky proposed mentalism, rationalism, intuitionism, and the notion of
deep structure as points of identity to help linguists distinguish between generative
grammar and post-Bloomfieldian theories. In the seventies he proposed autonomous
syntax as a way to distinguish between his theories and other uninteresting or nonscientific theories like generative semanticists and sociolinguistics. In the eighties he
proposed the dichotomy between principles and parameters as yet another organizing
thesis giving linguists a sense of identity and excluding other theories (as well as a way to
deal with language acquisition in generative grammar). Identity holds academic fields
together, and by managing the disciplinary identity of linguistics, Chomsky has over the
past several decades both periodically and consistently renewed his dominance of the
field.
Oenbring / 163
Chapter 4: Noam Chomsky: Serial Revolutionary
Introduction
Revolution is the master plot of linguistic history, what gives sense to our work and
careers, what makes it worth getting out of bed in the morning.
John Joseph, “The Structure of Linguistic Revolutions,” 1995
A Brief Introduction
In the previous two chapters I presented an extensive, but by no means
comprehensive, rhetorical history of generative grammar from its conception to the
Principles and Parameters framework, paying special attention to how Chomsky has
rhetorically created each of his successive (at least rhetorical) revolutions in the study of
human language. In this chapter, I present several analyses that, although related to the
organizing themes of the previous chapter two chapters, did not fit into the specific
narrative presented in chapters two and three (the narrative presented there already being
plenty long). In this chapter I analyze a handful of distinct rhetorical strategies that
Chomsky has used that have helped him achieve these successive rhetorical revolutions;
in this chapter I analyze several distinct approaches that Chomsky has invoked that have
helped him live the life of a serial revolutionary.165 My analyses in this chapter include:
how Chomsky and his followers have used the notion of Kuhnian scientific revolutions in
165
Serial Revolutionary is a term I have borrowed from Koerner (2002) and Joseph (1995).
Oenbring / 164
order to support their own self-serving history of the discipline of linguistics;166 how
Chomsky’s alluring terminology (i.e., his status as a phrase maker) has served to
reinforce his place in the field; and finally, but importantly, how Chomsky’s status as
perhaps the most famous radical public intellectual has helped him craft a revolutionary
ethos, reinforcing his person as point of identity for generative grammarians and linguists
as a whole.
Revolutionary Historiography and Boundary Work
Linguistic theory is concerned with an ideal speaker-listener, in a completely
homogenous speech-community, who knows its language perfectly and is unaffected by
such grammatically irrelevant conditions as memory limitations, distractions, shifts of
attention and interest, and errors (random or characteristic) in applying his knowledge
of the language in actual performance.
Chomsky, Aspects of the Theory of Syntax
Historiography is primarily concerned with an ideal Bloomfieldian, in a completely
homogenous scientific community, who embodies its implicit model perfectly,
unaffected by such irrelevant conditions as historical limitations, shifts of attention
166
As I argued in the previous chapter, Chomsky and his followers have routinely suggested that
Chomsky’s work was totally distinct from the ruling post-Bloomfieldians. Chomsky and his
followers did this in order to rhetorically create the existence of a break, a seeming
epistemological rupture (a tradition begins with Lees’ review of Syntactic Structures). The object
of this chapter is similar, but is not specifically on how Chomsky and his followers have
misrepresented the post-Bloomfieldian program. In this chapter, I instead focus on how
Chomsky and his followers have told the story of the history of the discipline of linguistics, and
how they have strategically invoked the concept of Kuhnian scientific revolutions in order to
legitimate their research program as scientific, to the exclusion of others.
Oenbring / 165
and interest, and personality (random or characteristic), in applying his knowledge of
the model in actual practice. Or so it sometimes seems.
Hymes and Fought, American Structuralism
The historiography of the dramatic shift in the disciplinary identity of linguistics
that Chomsky caused in the fifties and sixties and the later changes of programs that
Chomsky has sponsored has been inextricably linked with Thomas Kuhn’s notion of
scientific revolutions — a notion brought into academic consciousness by Kuhn’s 1962
book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions.167 While Kuhn did not invent the notion of
scientific revolutions,168 his book, published on the cusp of the revolutionary fervor of the
mid to late sixties, must be recognized as remarkably successful, both in academic and
popular contexts.
Many commentators have over the years had much to say over whether the notion
of Kuhnian revolutions really can apply in the field of linguistics.169 Those works that
have specifically commented on whether Chomsky’s work has led to a scientific
revolution can be divided into three broad camps: the propagandistic, presenting a
167
In The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Kuhn describes paradigms as the sets of accepted
truths and practices that organize scientific fields’ means of collecting and making meaning out of
the world. Whenever the available facts cannot support the prevailing assumptions, the ruling
paradigm reconstitutes itself in another form. The changes of paradigms, or revolutions, that
Kuhn describes are, of course, well-known and now canonical (for example, the paradigm of
Copernican cosmology; the paradigm of Newtonian physics).
168
Many commentators link the notion of scientific revolutions to Kant’s claim that his thought
had undergone a “Copernican Revolution.” In fact, many scholars trace the spread of the notion
of ‘revolution’ itself to Copernicus’ De Revolutionibus (Cohen [1985]).
169
See, for example, Hymes’ Studies in the History of Linguistics: Traditions and Paradigms and
Grotsch’s book with a wonderful German title Sprachwissenschaftgeschichtsschreibung, a text
that, unfortunately, only deals a minor amount with post-1957 developments.
Oenbring / 166
revolutionary narrative (see, for example, Smith and Wilson [1979]; Newmeyer [1980
(1986)], [1986b]; Searle [1972]170; and several of Chomsky’s own statements [e.g., The
Generative Enterprise Revisited]); accounts directly critical of the Chomskyan
revolutionary narrative (see, for example, Antilla [1974]; Hymes [1974]; and Murray
[1980] and [1994]); and more neutral analyses of how the concept of revolution as it
relates to the ascendance of generative grammar has worked in linguistic historiography.
(Indeed, the preeminent historian of linguistics, E.F.K. Koerner, a scholar whose work
has done much to uphold the ideal of unbiased disciplinary history, has devoted a number
of publications to analyzing the concept of revolution and its place in the historiography
of generative grammar [see, for example, (1978); (1989); (1996); and (2002)].)171
Although Chomsky and his followers have often critiqued the specifics of
Kuhnian historiography172 and its relevance in linguistics, they have nevertheless invoked
the notion of disciplinary revolutions á là Kuhn in order to provide a coherent conceptual
frame to present the ascendance of their field. The rhetorical value of presenting the
history of their field as a series of scientific revolutions is clear. As Hymes (1974),
commenting on the first revolution, states, “the attractiveness of Kuhn’s notion
undoubtedly is due to the fact … that it summarizes, and dignifies, a genuine sense of the
Searle, however, quickly became a staunch critic of generative grammar and Chomsky’s place
within the school.
171
While critical historians such as Murray as well as pure historians such as Koerner have
expressed a healthy skepticism of the self-serving notion of revolution promoted by Chomskyans,
both the critical historians and the pure historians neglect to recognize in their analyses that the
notion of revolution has tied itself inextricably with the disciplinary identity generative grammar
— even if that revolution is merely an illusion. That is to say, it doesn’t matter if Chomsky’s
revolution has fulfilled the requirements of a Kuhnian revolution for it to be a genuine revolution;
the Chomskyan revolution is a legitimate social fact whether one likes it or not.
172
See, for example, Chomsky’s take on Kuhnian revolutions in the interview material
reproduced in Haley and Lunsford’s Noam Chomsky (130).
170
Oenbring / 167
recent past” (26). However, Chomsky and his followers have emphasized the
revolutionary status of only those models sponsored by Chomsky that have been most
successful in reframing the disciplinary identity of linguistics; generative grammarians
have carefully played their revolution cards when telling the history of generative
grammar.
An important rhetorical effect of Chomsky’s revolutionary historiography is to
construct generative grammar as ‘scientific’ and post-Bloomfieldian linguistics as ‘nonscientific’. Indeed, as Hymes and Fought note, “current images of the history of
American Structuralism serve boundary maintenance, legitimating some concerns and
contributions, and excluding others” (4, emphasis added).173 What’s more, framing the
history of generative grammar as a series of alluring Kuhnian revolutions is part and
parcel of what critics of generative grammar have called the “eclipsing stance.”174
As I have already demonstrated, Chomsky has done much to present his own
version of the history of linguistics. (In fact, although the book is not taken seriously by
contemporary historians of linguistics, many historians of linguistics nevertheless
Ryckman magisterial summarizes all of this in the introduction to his “Method and Theory in
Harris’s Grammar of Information.” Specifically Ryckman states that:
For more than a quarter century, the recent history of linguistics has featured a dramatic
narrative relating how, beginning in the early 1960s, structuralism, as a viable research
program, was rapidly eclipsed by the ‘revolution’ — in the classically Kuhnian sense of
paradigm shift – of generative grammar. It appears irrelevant that American
structuralism was never a paradigm in Kuhn’s sense — a unified or even consistent
program of methods, problems, goals or approaches … But the emphatic portrayal of a
‘scientific revolution’ has an obvious legitimating function in a discipline historically
occupying nebulous and disputed turf abutting on the humanities, the natural sciences,
and the natural sciences. (Ryckman 19)
As Ryckman notes, the emphatic portrayal of a scientific revolution has a “legitimating function”
for linguists.
174
See, for example, Koerner (2002) (following Voegelin and Voegelin [1963]) and Hockett
(1987: 1).
173
Oenbring / 168
recognize Chomsky’s Cartesian Linguistics as the text that provided much of the impetus
for the study of the history of linguistics.) Most commonly, when Chomsky tells the story
of the early history of generative grammar (see, for example, Chomsky [1968: 338];
[1975: 11]; [1977: 34]; and [1991]), he suggests the existence of profound differences
between his work and the work of the post-Bloomfieldians, most notably Harris (a claim
challenged by, among others, Matthews [1993]). That is to say, he attempts to frame the
approaches he has sponsored as more novel and unique than they truly were. For
example, in a 1958 paper (i.e., a mere year after Syntactic Structures) presented at the
Third Texas Conference of Problems of Linguistics Analysis in English “A
Transformational Approach to Syntax,”175 a paper that is not a purely historical account,
Chomsky starts off by claiming that his methods developed directly out of Harris’, but
later in the paper explains the important differences between his theories and those of the
post-Bloomfieldians. That is to say, as elsewhere, Chomsky claims continuity before he
claims rupture. (It is interesting that Chomsky would so early in his career attempt to
develop a narrative describing the origin his theories.)
In the introduction to his massive 1975 book The Logical Structure of Linguistic
Theory (the introduction, written in 1973, reflects on the origin of his theories and the
history of the study, completed in 1955 but not published until twenty years later),
Chomsky is not afraid to be much bolder in his proclamations regarding the novelty of
his theories than he is in the 1958 paper. Deploying a typical host of terminology and
points of identity that he has sponsored (e.g., “the initial state of the organism” [13]),
Interestingly, “A Tranformational Approach to Syntax” was reprinted a mere ten years later in
a volume of papers entitled Classics in Linguistics.
175
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Chomsky, for example, frames his theories vis-à-vis the post-Bloomfieldians using the
dichotomy between empiricism and rationalism (13). Having already won his original
revolution and with the linguistics wars wrapping up, Chomsky isn’t afraid to be much
bolder than he was in 1958. Chomsky, for example, states that:
It became increasingly clear to me that the methodological limitation to
procedures based on substitution, matching, and similar ‘taxonomic’ operations
was arbitrary and unwarranted. One might approach the problem of projecting a
corpus to a language of grammatical sentences in an entirely different way, with a
procedure for evaluating a completed system of categories rather than a procedure
for constructing these categories step by step by taxonomic methods. (31,
emphasis added)
What’s more, while Chomsky recognizes in the introduction to the book that The Logical
Structure of Linguistic Theory lacks the ‘revolutionary’ mentalism of Current Issues and
Aspects — suggesting that raising the issue in the mid-fifties would have been “too
audacious”(35), he nevertheless reads mentalism (what he calls the “psychological
analogue” [35]) back onto LSLT.
Indeed, since the seventies, Chomsky has routinely told the story of his
‘conversion’ away from Harris-style discovery procedures (a notion that Harris did not
use to describe his own work) as a moment of epiphany. According to Chomsky, his
conversion occurred on a boat “mid-Atlantic, aided by a bout of seasicknesss, on a
rickety tub that was listing noticeably – it had been sunk by the Germans and now as
making its first voyage after having been salvaged” (1979: 131). This is an undeniably
Oenbring / 170
attractive story and has been reproduced by several hagiographers and historians of
linguistics (see, for example, Haley and Lunsford). (In fact, “An Epiphany at Sea” is the
title of the first chapter of the documentary The Mind of Noam Chomsky.)
Newmeyer’s (1980 [1986]) book Linguistic Theory in America, a text that has
become the ‘official’ history of generative grammar within the paradigm, follows
Chomsky’s lead in framing the origin of generative grammar as an epistemological
rupture.176 Using a “revolutionary” (1986: 17) rhetoric to describe the ascendance of
Chomsky’s early approaches (and locating the revolution largely in Syntactic Structures),
Newmeyer clearly engages in a straw man representation of the post-Bloomfieldians;
following Chomsky, he presents the group as a largely homogenous and uninspired group
of scholars.177 This straw man representation is clearly designed to promote the eclipsing
stance — an eclipsing stance that has helped generative grammarians build the
revolutionary identity of their program.
For a less technical account – one focused specifically on the notions of politics and the
autonomy of linguistics – see Newmeyer’s (1986) The Politics of Linguistics.
177
Indeed, one of the only examples of post-Bloomfieldian methods that Newmeyer presents is
quite funny in its banality. Newmeyer suggests that:
One method was proposed by Harris (1955), who suggested that morph boundaries might
be arrived at by a procedure whose first step was the calculation of the number of
phonemes that could conceivably follow a sequence of phonemes in a string. Harris used
by way of illustration the English sentence he’s clever, phonemicized as /hiyzklevər/. He
estimated that 9 phonemes can follow utterance-initial /h/, 14 utterance-initial /hi/, 29
/hiy/, 29 /hiyz/, 11 /hiyzk/, 7 /hiyzkl/, 8 /hiyzkle/ 1 /hiyzklev/, 1 /hiyzklevə/, and 28
/hizklevər/. Harris theorized that morph boundaries followed peaks, that is, that they
were to be posited after /y/, /z/, and /r/. … The procedure for classifying morphs into
morphemes was similar to that for classifying phones into phonemes. (Newmeyer 8)
Providing this example of a method advocated by Zellig Harris, a method that smacks of absurd
empiricism, Newmeyer (1986) furthers his project of demarcating the ‘scientific’ approaches of
the generative tradition with ‘non-scientific’ approaches.
176
Oenbring / 171
As I have suggested, Chomsky has worked to emphasize the primacy of the
Aspects program / standard theory and GB/P and P — specifically, the approaches where
he has articulated methods that most directly affected the disciplinary identity of
linguistics. In 1979 and 1980 — in what would prove to be the waning days of the
extended standard theory (and, by some accounts, a nadir in Chomsky’s prestige),
Chomsky participated in a series of interviews that would eventually be published as
Noam Chomsky and the Generative Enterprise (1982), a volume that led to a second
edition with two more rounds of interviews: 2004’s The Generative Enterprise Revisited.
In the 1979/1980 interviews, when asked about Kuhnian revolutions and their relation to
the history of science and linguistics, Chomsky is keen to dismiss the idea that his work
had led to a revolution in linguistics and is skeptical of the notion of Kuhnian revolutions
outside of the hard sciences. Specifically, Chomsky states that “I think [Kuhn’s work] is
widely misused outside the natural sciences. The number of real scientific revolutions is
extremely small: two maybe three if you press it … To find one outside the natural
sciences is hard … My own feeling is that linguistics has not achieved anything like a
Galilean revolution” (66).
Chomsky’s next sentence is, however, coyly prophetic: “its first revolution is
maybe somewhere on the horizon” (66). Indeed, in the Revisited interviews of
2002/2003, more than two decades after the introduction of GB/P and P, and nearing a
decade since the advent of the Minimalist Program, Chomsky claims for generative
grammar (and obliquely himself) that the Principles and Parameters approach had led to
profound insights in the study of the language: a revolution. Specifically, Chomsky
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states in the 2002/2003 interviews that “the principles and parameters approach which
was, I think, the only real revolutionary departure in linguistics maybe in the last several
thousand years, much more so than the original work in generative grammar” (148).178
While this proclamation is particularly striking seeing that in the Revisited edition of The
Generative Enterprise it takes place in the same volume as his claims that generative
grammar had not constituted a revolution, Chomsky has, in fact, since the mid-80s
routinely claimed that GB/P and P has constituted a “major conceptual shift” (see, for
example, Knowledge of Language).179
Following Chomsky, Newmeyer’s histories of generative grammar (e.g., [1980
(1986)] and [1996]) emphasize the primacy of the Aspects program and GB/P and P, all
while seemingly denigrating the importance of EST. For example, Newmeyer (1980
[1986]) clearly suggests the Aspects model to have circumscribed nearly every major
development in generative grammar from 1965 on, stating that “EVERY post-Aspects
tendency, whether on the side of the angels or on the side of the Devil, found Chomksy’s
remarks about the relationship of syntax and semantics in that book vague enough to suit
its own purposes” (92). Similarly, describing the development of GB/P and P,
Newmeyer (1996) states that:
Note that Chomsky locates the revolution in GB/P and P and not the Minimalist Program — a
framework that he had been articulating for a decade — but which had not (and has not) been as
successful as GB/P and P at winning followers.
179
For example, Chomsky (1991) claims that “this conceptual shift to a principles-and-parameters
theory is a very radical departure from the long history of the study of language, much more so
than early generative grammar, in the context of the second cognitive revolution, which in many
ways revived and clarified ideas that were traditional, if long-forgotten” (23).
178
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The publication of the paper ‘On binding’ in 1980 and, much more importantly,
the launching of the GB framework in the following year by the publication of the
book Lectures on Government and Binding (LGB) represented a quantum leap
forward in the development of the ‘Conditions’ framework. These works seemed
to unify a great number of seemingly disparate grammatical phenomena in a
conceptually simple and elegant overall framework of principles … The effect of
LGB was explosive. It seemed as if overnight ten times as many people were
working in GB as had been involved in its antecedent conditions framework in the
year before its publication. (Newmeyer 63)
As this quote suggests, Newmeyer frames the advent of GB/P and P as a “quantum leap
forward”: a revolution.
While there had been plenty of dissent during EST (indeed, the development of
the functionalist school(s) started in earnest in the seventies [see, for example, Dik (1978)
and Givón (1979)]), the fact that Chomsky and Newmeyer would later deemphasize the
importance of the ‘official’ model of generative grammar in the 1970s seems strange. In
fact, in the preface of the second edition of Linguistic Theory in America, Newmeyer
(1986) suggests that he wrote the first edition, which was composed in the late seventies,
during “the only major lull in syntactic research between the mid 1950s and the present”
and that EST was “unappealing” (ix) to many linguists. While EST was the dominant
framework within Chomskyan linguistics in the seventies, it did not, however, capture the
disciplinary imagination of linguistics in the manner that Syntactic Structures, Aspects,
and GB/P and P have. By emphasizing the revolutionary nature of only Chomsky’s
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models that have captured the disciplinary imagination — models that have inspired the
most later scholarship, Chomsky and his followers have worked to crystallize those
programs as points of identity for other linguists, thereby interpolating all work inspired
by, however tangentially, the standard theory and GB/P and P within the propositions of
those respective models. The rhetorical effect of these maneuvers is clear: they reinforce
Chomsky’s programs (and his name) as points of disciplinary coherence.
Of course, generative grammarians’ claims that the advent of early generative
grammar and GB/P and P have led to scientific revolutions in disciplinary methods have
not gone unchallenged. Engaging in a common critique of how generative grammarians
have told the history of their field, Matthews (1993) suggests that Chomsky and his
supporters have invoked the concept of Kuhnian revolutions in order to present an
oversimplified and romanticized portrait of the ascendance of their approach; framing
Chomsky’s theories as leading to revolutions has, according to Matthews and others,
been a rhetorical strategy (although they have avoided using the rhetorical language180)
invoked by generative grammarians in order to engage in boundary work. Specifically,
Matthews claims that invoking the notion of Kuhnian revolutions has “allowed
Chomsky’s supporters to make events fit Kuhn’s model” (28).
In particular, critiques of the sort presented by Matthews (the most developed of
which have been produced by Murray [1980] and [1994]) have worked to debunk the
Hymes (1974) does, however, invoke the notions of “rhetoric and ideology” (16) when
describing this issue.
180
Oenbring / 175
idea, common among generative grammarians, and promoted by Chomsky himself,181
that there was a broad effort on the behalf of the post-Bloomfieldians and other linguists
to block Chomsky from publication. (One of Chomsky’s favorite [untrue] claims is that
LSLT wasn’t published until the 1970s because it was against the concerns of the
linguistic establishment.) Murray (1980) and (1994), however, suggests that Bloch, a
leading post-Bloomfieldian and editor of the journal Language, actually did much to
further Chomsky’s career.
Countering Murray’s critique in 1980’s “Gatekeepers and the ‘Chomskyan
Revolution,’” Newmeyer’s second edition of Linguistic Theory in America suggests,
largely correctly, that “Kuhn never implies that the old guard oppresses new ideas” (38)
in Structure. Indeed, while Kuhn does suggest in Structure that older generations of
scholars may demonstrate “resistance” to new ideas, this “resistance,” as articulated in
Structure, is more an unwillingness on the older generation’s part to convert to the new
paradigm than an active attempt to prevent the ascendance of the new paradigm.
Newmeyer, furthermore, in his “Has there been a Chomskyan Revolution in
Linguistics?”, another attempt to counter Murray’s claims, deploys a rhetoric of
revolutionary disciplinary development while recognizing that one of the central
181
In particular, Chomsky has attempted to suggest that the fact that his massive 1955 manuscript
The Logical Structure of Linguistic Theory wasn’t published until 1975 was because the field
wasn’t receptive to his work. Chomsky suggests this clearly in The Generative Enterprise
Revisited: “it is true that [my] work is quite removed from what was called ‘linguistics’ twentyfive years ago. That is why I am at MIT, not at a university that had a tradition in linguistics. And
it is why my first work was not published until twenty years after it was finished, in 1975” (67).
Murray (1999), however, provides clear evidence — including the entire body of a short 1957
letter from Chomsky to a Dutch publisher — that two Dutch publishers were interested in LSLT
in the fifties. What’s more, Chomsky states clearly on the first page of the introduction to LSLT
that “I have, for several years, refused offers to publish” (1) the book.
Oenbring / 176
requirements of Kuhn’s model has not taken place following Chomsky’s ‘revolution’:
namely, Kuhn’s requirement that researchers in a field quickly achieve near total
consensus after a revolution. That is to say, while making claims using explicitly
Kuhnian language (i.e., claiming that there had, in fact, been a Chomskyan revolution),
Newmeyer, nevertheless, criticizes Kuhnian historiography. Newmeyer states, for
example, that “Kuhn’s theory of scientific revolutions has been subject to considerable
scrutiny; and it seems fair to say that only a small number of philosophers of science
accept it, even in broad outline” (1986b: 7).
It is interesting to note that generative grammarians have claimed revolutionary
status for several of the programs that Chomsky has sponsored even though many have
denigrated the specifics of Kuhnian historiography. Indeed, although Kuhn makes several
general claims for how scientific revolutions are set up in Structure, Kuhn’s ideas about
the setup of scientific revolutions articulated in Structure seem to have quickly merged
with more popular understandings of the concept of revolution, and rhetors deploying the
concept of scientific revolutions need not even suggest that the revolution that they are
arguing for closely follows the outline of the plot182 of scientific revolutions that Kuhn
suggests in Structure. All of this leads quickly to a hypothesis regarding a reason for the
resounding success of Kuhn’s book: one might suggest that one reason why Kuhn’s text
has been so successful is that scholars of many different stripes have been able to read
their own agendas into Structure’s vague and alluring propositions.
Indeed, the chapter titles of Structure attempt to frame a coherent plot. A few include: “The
Route to Normal Science”; “Anomaly and the Emergence of Scientific Discoveries”; “Crisis and
the Emergence of Scientific Discoveries”; “The Response to Crisis”; and “The Resolution of
Revolutions.”
182
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Terminology and Disciplinary Identity
In Shaping Science with Rhetoric, rhetorician of science Ceccarelli analyzes
several successful and not-so successful attempts to reorganize communities of scholars,
with a focus on both successful ‘revolutionary’ scientists (Dobzhansky, Schrӧdinger) and
less-than successful revolutionary scientists (Wilson). According to Ceccarelli, an
important tool used by scientists able to foment intellectual revolutions and unite
competing intellectual communities is what she calls conceptual chiasmus. Basically,
conceptual chiasmus means this: using language and concepts that allow competing
intellectual communities to see the world through one another’s eyes thereby
reorganizing the discipline around new core metaphors and models. Ceccarelli defines
conceptual chiasmus specifically as “a rhetorical strategy that reverses disciplinary
expectations surrounding conceptual categories, often through metaphor, to promote the
parallel crisscrossing of intellectual space. With a conceptual chiasmus, unusual
linguistic choices force readers from one discipline to think about an issue in terms more
appropriate to their counterparts in another discipline, and vice versa” (5). As
Ceccarelli’s notion reminds us, specific metaphors and concepts can, in a very real sense,
play an important role in constituting intellectual communities. While Ceccarelli avoids
the term, it is clear that what she is describing with conceptual chiasmus is a form of
what I have called in this study identity work; metaphors and concepts that are successful
in building new intellectual communities are those that lay the foundations for new
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disciplinary identities. Moreover, such identity work can be a much more powerful tool
than boundary work.
One of Chomsky’s most important rhetorical strategies for engaging in identity
work — that is for constituting the community of generative grammarians and linguists
as coherent wholes — has, I would like to suggest, been his work to promote of a host of
bold and alluring concepts and dichotomies, a tradition he has continued throughout his
career. Indeed, as I have intimated, one of Chomsky’s primary functions within
generative grammar and linguistics as a whole has been as a phrase maker. As I will
show, many of Chomsky’s important terms — what I shall refer to here as points of
identity — have become quite widespread in use, and not just among generative
grammarians, but also among linguists of many different stripes. That is to say, one of the
primary reasons generative grammarians and linguists as whole appear beholden to
Chomsky is that the terms he has sponsored have become rallying points and points of
disciplinary coherence and identity. What’s more, Chomsky routinely introduces
perfectly good terms only to abandon or rearticulate many of them after several years; he
has routinely updated his guiding terminology — what we might call, following
rhetorician Kenneth Burke, his god-terms183 — often in co-occurrence with his subrevolutions. It is clear that these changes of god-terms are done in order to build the
appearance of revolution — and the revolutionary identity of — these subsequent shifts
in methods.
183
I.e., bold, vague notions that we are expected to pay deference to (e.g., freedom and justice).
Oenbring / 179
Chomsky has sponsored several dichotomies that have proven captivating to the
disciplinary imagination of linguists, including: competence and performance (later
rearticulated as i-language and e-language); deep structure / surface structure (later
reframed as D-structure / S-structure). This introduction of terminology routinely takes
place in what I have called the early world creation sections of his linguistic writing.
Similarly, Chomsky has sponsored stand-alone terminology, some of it seemingly
contradictory. 184 Chomsky’s most famous terms include (in roughly historical order): the
creative aspect of language use (a focus on why human beings are able to produce novel
well-formed sentences of their native tongues and have other people recognize those
sentences as well-formed); universal grammar (the theory that there exist biologicallyinnate [and accessible] characteristics of all human languages); the initial state of the
organism (basically, the state of universal grammar at birth); Cartesian linguistics (in
Chomsky’s definition this covers both the innate element, and the creative nature of
human languages, notions that he traces, largely erroneously, to Descartes) ; the poverty
of stimulus (the notion that children do not [apparently] receive enough stimulus to learn
as perfectly as they do the syntax of their language, thus being support for the biological
Indeed, many of the captivating notions that Chomsky has espoused across his project — and
even the concepts that he has espoused at the same time — can seem strangely contradictory or
incommensurable with one another. Although much of the appeal of Chomsky’s works has
stemmed from his appearance as a much more systematic (or at least system-sponsoring) scholar
than the postmodern hordes, Chomsky’s success as a rhetor can, to some degree, be connected to
the fact that the concepts he has promoted seem coherent and systematic in that they have been
held together as a system by Chomsky’s name. That is to say, Chomsky is certainly more of a
Nietzschean aphorist than he and his followers would like to admit.
184
Oenbring / 180
nature of language185); Plato’s problem (a place in Plato’s work that Chomsky suggests is
analogous to the learning of syntax where Socrates claims that the principles of geometry
must exist as innate ideas as boys can learn them so quickly); Orwell’s problem (how to
account for the creative nature of language use [and the fundamentally creative nature of
human beings] — something Chomsky claims is a serious problem for anyone focusing
on the socially-constructed nature of language, as Orwell apparently does in his dystopian
novel 1984); methodological naturalism (treating human languages as objects of nature);
and, most recently, biolinguistics (a term reemphasizing the biological nature of human
languages).
Of course, Chomsky did not invent all of these terms. Chomsky’s recent (2006)
manuscript “Approaching UG from Below,” for example, credits the term
“biolinguistics” to Piattelli in 1974. Nevertheless, many of these concepts have become
intimately tied to Chomsky’s name within the disciplinary matrix of linguistics;
regardless of their origin, the terms have become famous precisely because Chomsky has
promoted them, with the spread of these terms, these points of identity, serving to
reinforce Chomsky’s influence. That is to say, the prominent place that Chomsky’s
terminology has played in generative grammar has led to the disciplinary coherence of
generative grammar — and linguistics as a whole — being tied to Chomsky’s own
person.
Perhaps the most interesting and (and for certain one of the most successful) of
these points of identity that Chomsky has sponsored is the notion of universal grammar,
See, for example, Chomsky’s famous 1959 review of behaviorist psychologist B.F. Skinner’s
Verbal Behavior in the journal Language.
185
Oenbring / 181
a notion that he introduced during the Aspects period. The idea that linguists could be
uncovering biological properties merely by analyzing the setup and function of strings of
syntax is, for certain, a tantalizing notion. Accordingly, many linguists — even those
analyzing elements of language other than syntax — claim, both when speaking among
themselves and when speaking of their project to others, that the ultimate goal of their
project is to uncover the features of universal grammar.186
Indeed, it is interesting to note how other linguists, even those not directly
beholden to Chomsky’s methods, have rhetorically used the Chomsky’s repertoire of
186
It is interesting to note, however, that Chomsky first rationalizes a search for universal
grammar in order to account for the creative aspect of language use, something that Chomsky
claims was a major concern of traditional linguistic theory (Humboldt and the Port Royal
Grammarians); Chomsky authorizes a new distinctly Chomskyan notion through another
distinctly Chomskyan notion (Aspects 6). While defining discipline-specific terms in relation to
one another may seem like tautology, this is a technique that Chomsky has used throughout his
career. (Indeed, Chomsky has himself recently admitted that the divide between two of his most
alluring and most frequently invoked terms [specifically language acquisition device and
universal grammar] is not clear: Chomsky has openly admitted that these terms that he frequently
invokes mean “the same thing” [2000: 54]). Such swarming of terminology (i.e., redefining
concepts in terms of one another) is one of Chomsky’s common rhetorical techniques. The
rhetorical effect of such swarming of terminology is, in effect, to create a hermetically-sealed
world of terminology where terms are defined in regard to one another, thus serving the projects
of world creation and identity work.
The following passage from Chomsky’s Essays on Form and Interpretation is as a nice
example of Chomsky using specific terms to undergird and legitimate other terms, all serving the
project of world creation:
The class of possible human languages is, I assume, specified by a genetically
determined property, apparently species-specific in important respects. Any proposed
linguistic theory — in particular EST — may be regarded as attempt to capture this
property, at least in part. Thus a linguistic theory may be understood as a theory of the
biological endowment that underlies the acquisition and use of language: in other terms,
as a theory of universal grammar (UG), where we take the goal of UG to be the
expression of those properties of human language that are biologically necessary. So
understood, UG is the theory of the human faculty of language. Any particular
grammar conforms to the principles of UG. (2, emphasis added)
Note the density of the distinctly Chomskyan terms in this paragraph. Chomsky is, in a very real
sense, building and solidifying a distinct intellectual space with such terminology.
Oenbring / 182
points of identity to undergird the claims of their own works.187 Just as both the liberal
and the conservative can look throughout the entire Bible and easily find evidence in
support of their value systems, and thereby reconcile their value system with
Christianity188 (and claim that their value system is supported by the authority of
Christianity), so can the linguist choose and latch onto whichever points of identity in
Chomsky’s work that they prefer and thereby reconcile their work with the project of
generative grammar — and by extension ‘scientific’ linguistics. That is to say, others can
read what they want into the master text, and use individual points of identity in the
master text to claim the authority of the master text’s traditions in order to support their
own work.
Much like a liberal need only invoke the parts of the Beatitudes to make their
project Christian, so can the linguist invoke a point of identity from Chomsky’s work to
make their project ‘science’. That is to say, by reconciling their work with the project of
generative grammar, linguists can frame their work as part of the broader project of
scientific (i.e., biologically-focused) linguistics. De Swart’s 1998 semantics textbook
Introduction to Natural Language Semantics is a good example of this. While the book
187
As literary theorists have argued (most notably Fish [1980]), a text is to a large degree created
by its readers. Similarly, rhetors can, based on their ruling beliefs and predispositions, read
seemingly contradictory notions into the same text, claiming the same text as support for vastly
different programs. The more captivating and vague are the text’s claims and its prose, the more
likely this is the case.
188
Just to list a few possible points of identity from the Gospel of Matthew, on the liberal side: 1)
Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth; 2) Blessed are the peacemakers; 3) Love
your enemies; 4) Judge not, that ye be not judged; 5) all things whatsoever ye would that men
should do to you, do ye even so to them; and on the conservative side: 1) Think not that I am
come to destroy the law, or the prophets; 2) But I say unto you, that whosoever looketh on a
woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart; 3) Because strait is
the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it.
Oenbring / 183
as a whole seems based on a platonistic, non-embodied theory of knowledge, the book
still demonstrates deference to Chomsky’s competence / performance dichotomy. De
Swart suggests, for example, in the introduction to the book that “knowledge of the
language system which is stored in the brain is what Chomsky (1965) refers to as the
speaker’s competence. Competence is contrasted with performance, which applies to the
use of the language system” (2). Indeed, De Swart’s invocation of the competence /
performance dichotomy seems to exist merely to frame the piece as part of a broader
project of uncovering the biological nature of language; the competence / performance
dichotomy has no bearing on the actual models of language presented in the book other
than to undergird the text’s place within the broader project of biologically-focused
‘scientific’ linguistics. Indeed, one might say that the only reason De Swart invokes
Chomsky’s famous dichotomy is to present a coherent public face of the discipline to
initiates.
Political Work and Revolutionary Ethos
A final element of Chomsky’s work that must be discussed in order to give a
thorough account of the place that the notion of revolution has played in the history of
generative grammar is Chomsky’s political work — the body of writing that he is,
arguably, most famous for throughout the academy and that he is, for certain, most
known for outside academia.189 While Chomsky and his followers dismiss the idea that
his political work has played a role in how his theories have been adjudicated by the
Nevertheless, Chomsky’s political work has received remarkably little attention from scholars
commenting on the Chomskyan revolution.
189
Oenbring / 184
linguistic establishment,190 Chomsky’s moral/political stature as perhaps the most
important radical public intellectual in America and his status as a ‘revolutionary’ linguist
have served to reinforce one another; just Chomsky’s fame as a ‘revolutionary’ linguist
has, without a doubt, served to build his credibility as an intellectual prophet among
popular audiences interested in his political work, his authority as a moral/political leader
has supported his cult of personality in the area of linguistics.
Of course, undertaking an analysis of Chomsky’s political work, due to the sheer
volume of publications that Chomsky has produced over the decades, is, in many ways, a
more intimidating task than analyzing Chomsky’s linguistic scholarship, and this study
makes no pretension of offering an authoritative word on Chomsky’s political writings.
Nevertheless, this chapter, an analysis of the role that the notion of revolution has played
in the history of generative grammar, would not be complete without at least a cursory
consideration of Chomsky’s political work — a body of writing that has worked to
solidify what I shall call Chomsky’s revolutionary ethos.191
Chomsky is, according to one of his hagiographers, “a beacon, an inspiration, a
catalyst for action” (Barsky 2007: 12) to many that follow his political writings, and I,
like many, am sympathetic with his overarching project in the area of politics and
ideology. Indeed, I am willing to state that I believe that, in the political arena,
Indeed, Newmeyer pays almost no attention to Chomsky’s political work in Linguistic Theory
in America, but follows Chomsky’s lead regarding the place of politics in the study of language in
The Politics of Linguistics.
191
As Kennedy notes in his commentary on his edition of Aristotle’s On Rhetoric, the concept of
ethos that dominates the piece is not language practices that a rhetor uses in order to project
themselves as an ethical subject, but is rather the worldview of a group of people. Nevertheless,
both are found in On Rhetoric, and the latter, although seemingly arhetorical, is the concept that
dominates the piece. When rhetorical critics use the concept of ethos, however, they largely
understand ethos with the former definition, often positing a host of different types of ethoi.
190
Oenbring / 185
Chomsky’s critiques have been of great value, especially at spreading system-based
critiques of the operations of power to popular audiences — even if I am suspicious of
the cult of personality that his writings on politics have engendered.192 Sympathy with
Chomsky’s political work, should not, however, as it has for many linguists, lead to
wholehearted deference to Chomsky’s claims in the area of linguistic theory. (Indeed,
linguist Carlos P. Otero, one of Chomsky’s most obsequious supporters of the master’s
cult of personality in both the realms of linguistics and politics, isn’t afraid — while
clearly commenting to some degree on the stances that Chomsky has taken — to label
Chomsky a “member of the prophetic tradition” [Language and Politics 34].)
While Chomsky had already secured his place as one of the most influential living
linguists in the world by the mid-sixties, he did not rest on his academic achievements.
Indeed, through his political activism during the Vietnam War era, Chomsky quickly
became one of the most famous radical public intellectuals in North America, a status
that he maintains to this day. (If anything, Chomsky’s political work has increased in the
past ten years as the frequency of his publications in linguistics has waned.) While many
contemporary academics spend much of their time bemoaning the fact that their trenchant
analyses of current events and contemporary culture are not paid attention to by the
populace and the popular media, finding an audience for his political theories has never
been a problem for Chomsky. Indeed, Chomsky’s first published volume of political
writings American Power and the New Mandarins (1969) and its translations led to
reviews documented in at least twenty publications, including major forums like The New
192
See Barsky (2007) for a largely hagiographic, but still interesting and valuable review of
Chomsky’s place in popular culture.
Oenbring / 186
York Times, Newsweek, The Economist, and The Christian Science Monitor (Koerner and
Tajima 96).
While his first major political writings were critiques of American involvement in
South East Asia,193 Chomsky quickly expanded the scope of his analyses to include all of
the following: American foreign policy in the Middle East, often in critique of Israel194;
American foreign policy in Latin America195; corporate control of media196; and, most
recently, American interventionism in the post-9/11 world.197 In his attacks on oppressive
systems of power in his political writings, Chomsky has routinely suggested that
academics themselves have been co-opted by the systems of power that it is their duty to
critique.198 Indeed, Chomsky has routinely positioned himself as an outsider to a
thoughtless academic establishment, a position that has worked to build his
‘revolutionary ethos’.
Broadly stated, the goal of Chomsky’s political writings is rather simple: to
uncover the operations of systems of power and catalogue their lies. As a whole,
Chomsky’s methods in his political work have remained largely unchanged since his
earliest publications. Using major newspapers, historical documents, government
193
See, for example, At War with Asia (1970), For Reasons of State (1973), and After the
Cataclysm (1979) with Herman, one of Chomsky’s most prolific co-authors on issues of politics.
194
See, for example, The Fateful Triangle (1983), and Pirates and Emperors (1986).
195
See, for example, On Power and Ideology: the Managua Lectures (1987), and Latin America:
from Colonization to Globalization [1999], a book of interviews by Dieterich.
196
See, for example, Manufacturing Consent (1988) (with Herman) Necessary Illusions (1989),
and Media Control (1997).
197
See, for example, 9-11 (2002), Hegemony or Survival (2003), Imperial Ambitions (2005) (a
book of interviews by Barsamian), and Failed States (2006), and Interventions (2007), a book of
reprinted post-9-11 op-eds.
198
See, for example, “The Responsibility of Intellectuals,” an essay first presented as a talk, then
in The New York Review of Books, and later in American Power and the New Mandarins (328)
and “The Secular Priesthood and the Perils of Democracy” in On Nature and Language.
Oenbring / 187
reports, academic studies,199 and plenty of specious and non-sources, Chomsky attempts
to catalogue the systematic distortion of the truth by the powerful. While Chomsky often
trenchantly scrutinizes specific language choices and misrepresentations by the
powerful,200 he does not offer general principles for analyzing the language practices of
those in power. The task of ideological critique, Chomsky believes, is rather simple; all
that is necessary is a little help taking off the veils.201
Moreover, Chomsky rarely attempts to promote a specific argument about why
the actions he analyzes should be seen as immoral; he assumes his audience will clearly
see the moral reprehensibility of the actions that he analyzes. That is to say, he believes
that there exist unshakable bedrock states of justice and truth, and he assumes that his
audiences could and will make the same connections he does in his analyses. In fact,
Chomsky has stated more than one that anyone of “normal intelligence” with “healthy
skepticism” (Language and Responsibility 3) can do the sorts of ideological critiques he
does in his political work.
Despite the fact that he has never lacked an audience willing to hear his ideas on
politics, Chomsky’s political writings rarely do more than catalogue and uncover what he
sees as the lies of institutions and systems of power; Chomsky rarely offers a concrete
action plan for building the sort of society that he (and many others) would like to see
engendered. While in his political writing Chomsky rarely does more than critique, the
For example, Howard Zinn’s People’s History of the United States.
See, for example, “Vietnam and the United States Global Strategy” in The Chomsky Reader.
201
Indeed, Chomsky states very directly on the first page of Language and Responsibility that
“critical analysis in the ideological area seems to me to be a fairly straightforward conceptual
abstraction. For the analysis of ideology, which occupies me very much, a bit of openmindedness, normal intelligence, and healthy skepticism will generally suffice” (3).
199
200
Oenbring / 188
political system that he promotes is basically anarcho-syndicalism. In a rare moment of
espousing rather than critiquing, Chomsky gives in his famous debate with Foucault an
extremely vague outline to the setup of the sort of society he would like engendered:
Now a federated, decentralized system of free associations, incorporating
economic as well as other social institutions, would be what I refer to as anarchosyndicalism; and it seems to me that this is the appropriate form of social
organization for an advanced technological society, in which human beings do not
have to be forced into the position of tools, of cogs in the machine. There is no
longer any social necessity for human beings to be treated as mechanical elements
in the productive process; that can be overcome and we must overcome it by a
society of freedom and free association, in which the creative urge that I consider
intrinsic to human nature, will in fact be able to realise itself in whatever way it
will. (Chomsky-Foucault Debate 38-39)
Of course, a “decentralized system of free associations” is a laudable ideal, but proposing
it as an ideal is very far from a specific action plan for implementing such a system.202
While Chomsky’s political work clearly demonstrates a thorough understanding
of the arbitrary and limiting effects of systems of power — a major concern of many
contemporary humanities academics, Chomsky’s political scholarship is, in many ways,
incommensurable with much politically-informed scholarship in the contemporary
humanities and social sciences. For one, Chomsky’s political writings are in many ways
For a slightly more developed — but still very abstract — discussion see the very slim (2005)
volume Government in the Future based on a single speech by Chomsky in 1970. (As if anything
important has occurred in international politics since then!)
202
Oenbring / 189
atheoretical; Chomsky is resistant to using the Marxist and postmodern-theoretical
terminology of contemporary humanists when they describe the operations of power
(e.g., discursive formations203 and subaltern consciousness). (Two notable exceptions are
the terms ideology and hegemony — both of which can be found in the titles of books that
Chomsky has written: On Ideology and Power [1987] and, more recently, Hegemony or
Survival [2003]. However, the terms ideology and hegemony are never theorized in these
books.)
Chomsky’s unwillingness to use Marxist and postmodernist jargon may explain,
in part, why his political writings have been so successful. Chomsky’s political writings
are, to a large extent, written for a popular audience. That is to say, they aren’t academic
pieces. Indeed, it is even arguable that Chomsky’s writings on politics have, due to their
greater accessibility to general academic and non-academic audiences, been more
successful at spreading the message of the arbitrary limiting effects of systems of power
than entire academic fields focused on exposing these same issues (e.g., critical discourse
analysis).
Another difference that makes Chomsky’s political work seemingly
incommensurable with much contemporary politically-informed scholarship in the
humanities and social science is that Chomsky, unlike many contemporary humanists and
social scientists, is invested in a robust theory of human nature, a theory that is grounded
in notions of human biology. Indeed, despite the fact that in his political work Chomsky
clearly demonstrates an understanding of the constraining effects of systems of power, he
203
See Foucault’s Archaeology of Knowledge.
Oenbring / 190
is unwilling to make the leap that many postmodernists do that suggests that human
beliefs are necessarily the byproducts of the locally- legitimated language games of their
surrounding culture and that there exist no bedrock foundations of justice or truth.204
Rather, when confronted with such postmodernist critiques Chomsky instead reiterates
his belief that human syntax, and by extension, human language practices as a whole, can
and should be described by appeals to a robust notion of human nature. For example,
when asked in an interview to reflect on Derrida’s critique of Western metaphysics, a
critique that foregrounds the indeterminacy of language, Chomsky claims first that he
doesn’t find such critiques interesting and later moves on to suggest that “what we find is
that there is a highly determinate, very definite structure of concepts and of meaning that
is intrinsic to our nature, and that as we acquire language or other cognitive systems these
things just kind of grow in our minds, like the same way we grow arms and legs”
(“Language, Politics and Composition,” Chomsky on Democracy and Education 377).
Following the stance he took earlier in his career as an outsider promoting the
idea of an innate, creative human nature in the face of an inhumane behaviorist and social
science establishment (I shall explain this more later), Chomsky has in recent years
positioned himself as a defiant defender of the enlightenment in the face of the hordes of
charlatan postmodernists. Chomsky, for example, claims in a 1992 essay in Z papers
“Rationality/science and post-this-or-that,” later reprinted in Chomsky on Democracy and
Education, that:
204
See, for example, Lyotard (1979 [1984]), and Rorty (1979).
Oenbring / 191
Keeping to the personal level, I have spent a lot of my life working on questions
such as these, using the only methods I know of — those condemned here as
“science,” “rationality,” “logic,” and so on. I therefore read the papers [of
postmodernists] with some hope that they would help me “transcend” these
limitations, or perhaps suggest an entirely different course. I’m afraid I was
disappointed. Admittedly, that may be my own limitation. Quite regularly, “my
eyes glaze over” when I read polysyllabic discourse on the themes of
poststructuralism and postmodernism; what I understand is largely truism or error,
but that is only a fraction of the total word count … no one seems to be able to
explain to me why the latest post-this-and-that is (for the most part) other than
truism, error, or gibberish (93)
In “Rationality/science,” Chomsk’s most important rejoinder to the so-called ‘science
wars’ of the 1990s, Chomsky makes his feelings about postmodern philosophy clear; it is
“polysyllabic discourse,” consisting largely of “truism, error, or gibberish.”
In the above passage, Chomsky invokes a position of modesty, claiming that his
inability to understand postmodern analyses may result from his “own limitation.”
Indeed, as many commentators have noted, Chomsky is in his lectures and in personal
interviews oftentimes “disarmingly modest” (Mehta 187). This modesty is not merely,
as some might suggest, the sign of a self-deprecating personality — a self-deprecating
personality that one might attempt to connect to Chomsky’s upbringing in Philadelphia
Jewish culture. Rather, Chomsky has strategically and rhetorically invoked modesty
throughout his career, a modesty that has allowed him to frame his claims not as his own
Oenbring / 192
individual pronouncements, but rather as the scrupulous findings of a group of
researchers. That is to say, invoking modesty has allowed Chomsky to occlude his own
agency in the development of his theories. For example, when directly asked about his
influence in the field of linguistics and to reflect on the advent of his theories, Chomsky
is oftentimes quick to defuse the idea that (certain) of his ideas are entirely new or that
he developed his ideas largely by himself, suggesting instead that the theories that he has
sponsored (and have become intimately tied to his own name) are theories developed
that developed in dialogue with his graduate students (Chomsky on Democracy and
Education 379) and other scholars (see, for example, Haley and Lunsford 137). Indeed,
one might even go so far as to say that Chomsky attempts to enact the ideal in science of
what philosophers and historians of science Shapin and Shaffer (1985) and Haraway
(1997) have called a “modest witness” — an effaced observer faithfully reporting
findings as “the objects of nature … speak through them” (Schneider 94).
Boundary Work and the ‘Two Chomskys’
Because Chomsky’s political theories are decidedly system-focused and his
theories of language are decidedly nature-focused, Chomsky and his followers (see, for
example, Newmeyer’s The Politics of Linguistics) have routinely attempted to draw firm
boundaries between political work and scientific scholarship on the study of language.
For example, Chomsky has, on many occasions, stated that are no compelling
connections between his theories regarding language and his theories about politics.
Chomsky states quite clearly in Language and Responsibility that “there is no very direct
Oenbring / 193
connection between my political activities, writing and other, and the work bearing on
language structures” (3). Chomsky’s claims for the incommensurability of his two
worlds, although raising the ire of many of his critics, has, however, been a point
championed by many of his followers.
Despite the fact that Chomsky’s political work and his work on language seem
totally at odds with one another, many commentators have attempted to suggest the
existence of features that unify the two Chomskys. Several commentators suggest, for
example, that a feature unifying his work in both areas is his idealism (see, for example,
Smith’s Chomsky: Ideas and Ideals and Haley and Lunsford [4]). A possible connection
between Chomsky’s anarchist politics and his linguistic theories that scholars have noted
— and a connection that I find more compelling than others — is his respect in both
bodies of work for the autonomous, creative, unconstructed subject. That is to say,
humans have, according to Chomsky, a biological, not cultural, need to express
themselves creatively — both in their use of language and in their everyday interactions
(see, for example, Chilton 24).
While attempting to reconcile the differences between the two Chomskys is,
indeed, interesting, what is more relevant to this study is to account for what Chomsky’s
suggestion that there are no similarities between his linguistics and his politics offers
rhetorically. For one, Chomsky can advance system-focused political critiques all while
defending his claims regarding the innateness of language. Similarly, by suggesting that
ideological critique is easy, he can denigrate the importance of approaches to the study of
language that foreground the social nature of language (e.g., poststructuralism and
Oenbring / 194
sociolinguistics); whereas analyzing language as biology is real scholarship and a proper
scientific pursuit, analyzing the social nature of language (i.e., language as culture) is a
hobby.205
Conclusion
To end merely by stating that Chomsky’s moral/political stature as one of the
most vocal and prominent critics of American foreign policy and his stance against the
behaviorist-social science and later postmodernist establishment has helped him embody
an outsider, revolutionary ethos is not, however, to go far enough, as it does not impart
enough rhetorical agency upon Chomsky. Indeed, Chomsky has done much himself to
embody the trope of prophet in the wilderness. That is to say, Chomsky has attempted to
frame himself in both his scholarship on language and in his political work as a
marginalized figure presenting a liberating truth while exposing the lies of powerful
205
While Chomsky routinely suggests that almost anyone can do the sort ideological critique he
does in his political work, Chomsky’s writings on issues of politics have, unquestionably,
supported his cult of personality in the area of linguistics. Following the master’s claims, Otero,
although a expressing support for Chomsky’s notion that ‘anyone can do this’, nevertheless,
wholeheartedly supports the notion that Chomsky is a thoroughly exceptional human being,
suggesting in the introduction to a volume of Chomsky’s political writings that “some might be
inclined to argue that by taking upon himself responsibilities that most people would be able to
carry out if they put their mind to it, he has ignored a heavier responsibility of not unnecessarily
risking his life, and with it many fruitful years of labor” (Language and Politics 37). (C.f., John
3:16 : “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son.”) Not one for
understatement, Otero claims elsewhere in the introduction, apparently without blushing, that “if
the usual standards had been applied to [Chomsky] (and presumably they would have been, had
he not challenged official doctrines), he would have been seen for many years now as a towering
figure in the history of civilization” (17). This quote is particularly interesting in that it suggests
that Chomsky’s radical politics have prevented his ideas about language and human nature from
getting a proper hearing in the forum of ideas; Otero suggests that Chomsky would have and
could have been more successful at spreading his ideas about language if he had not engaged in
political work.
Oenbring / 195
institutional establishments. He has, in his work, consciously or unconsciously embodied
what rhetorician of science Alan Gross calls “the Galilean myth canonizing deviance”
(13).206
Playing into this Galliean myth, Chomsky and his supporters have routinely
attempted to frame Chomsky as a marginal figure in the field of linguistics and the
academic world as a whole. Chomsky, indeed, regularly understates his own importance
in the field of linguistics. Chomsky, for example, suggests, rather hyperbolically, in the
1979/80 interviews of The Generative Enterprise Revisited that “it also has to be
emphasized …that this framework is only taken seriously by a tiny minority in the field,
certainly in the United States. For example I rarely give a talk in a linguistics department
on any work of the past ten or fifteen years” (67). While we should recognize that
Chomsky did suggest this during EST, a low point in his prestige, the statement is,
however, clearly hyperbolic. In the same interview, Chomsky continues his position of
faux modesty. Specifically, Chomsky claims that “at least as I look back over my own
relation to the field, in every point it has been completely isolated, or almost completely
isolated. I do not see that the situation is very different now. In fact, I think it is hardly
less true now than before” (68). Needless to say, this is quite a surprising comment
coming from (both then and now) the world’s most famous living linguist. The rhetorical
purpose of this statement is, however, clear: Chomsky is attempting to emphasize his
status as a marginalized figure (thereby building his outsider ethos).
206
Interestingly, as I suggest later, Chomsky even connects the foundations of generative
grammar with the observations of Galileo in some of his most recent publications on language
(see, for example, 2002’s On Nature and Language).
Oenbring / 196
Similarly, despite the fact that Chomsky is one of the most famous radical public
intellectuals of the past half-century, his supporters have attempted to suggest that there
has been a concerted effort on the behalf of the powerful to silence Chomsky’s political
work. Barsky, for example, quotes Herman, one of Chomsky’s frequent co-authors for
political books, in Noam Chomsky: a Life of Dissent, as stating that:
During the Vietnam war era, a period of sizable and active anti-war movement,
roughly from 1965 to 1972, Chomsky wrote and spoke extensively, but even then
his access was confined to radical publications like Ramparts and Liberation, plus
the New York Review of books, the mainstream exception through
1972. Chomsky has never had an Op Ed column in the Washington Post, and his
lone opinion piece in the New York Times was not an original contribution but
rather excerpts from testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations
Committee. (qtd. in Barsky : 162)
Of course, at other times, Chomsky’s followers brag openly about the master’s influence
(e.g., Otero happily reports that Chomsky has been “only activist and critic of United
States domestic and foreign policy to make Nixon’s ‘enemy list’” [18]). Similarly, a
major theme of at least two of the most important films promoting Chomsky’s political
work Manufacturing Consent and Noam Chomsky: Rebel without a Pause — both
seemingly more interested in fanning the flames of the master’s cult of personality than
actually presenting his political ideas — is that Chomsky has been inappropriately barred
from participation in major media forums.
Oenbring / 197
More broadly, we can say that a rhetorical technique that Chomsky has used —
and his followers have picked up on, both in how he has told the history of linguistics and
in his political work — is enacting a perpetual posture of dissidence, a posture that has
continued well past the time of his actual marginalization. Indeed, the revolutionary
identity of the field of generative grammar in conjunction with Chomsky’s own radical
political credentials have worked in conjunction to solidify the master’s revolutionary
ethos, an ethos that has given Chomsky the prerogative to move the field according to his
intuitions. That is say, although Chomsky has occupied halls of power for quite some
time, he still wears for his followers the same fatigues he wore in the jungle of the Sierra
Maestra decades ago.
Oenbring / 198
Chapter 5: The Textual Dynamics of Generative Grammar, Part I: The
Research Article and Linguistics Textbook
Introduction
I have, up to now, provided a rhetorical reading of the history of generative
grammar that, due to the expansive nature of the events and texts brought together, has
had to paint in rather broad strokes. Moreover, despite this study’s frequent use of close
reading and its close attention to the environment in which the texts being analyzed were
articulated, the analysis that I have provided up to now may seem more the proper object
for a historian of linguistics, rather than a rhetorician. In the next two chapters, I make a
turn toward a closer analysis of the texturation of generative grammar; in the coming two
chapters I offer an analysis of the specific textual and rhetorical features of several
different types of texts (what I shall call, following current practice in rhetoric and
composition, different genres) in which the scholarship of generative grammar is
manifested. Specifically, I tie the specific textual features of prominent textual forms to
the communities that use the texts. That is to say, what I offer here is a basic analysis of
the textual dynamics of generative grammar.
Tracing the history and methods of post-Bloomfieldian linguists, Hymes and
Fought label three distinct genres as constituting the core of post-Bloomfieldian methods.
These are the “wholely theoretical article,” the “presentation of theoretical points in
connection of an analysis of data from a specific language” and, beginning with Zellig
Harris, the “structural restatement.” Hymes and Fought suggest that “the underlying
Oenbring / 199
continuity from the Bloomfieldian generation onward can be seen in terms of these
genres” (123). As Hymes and Fought recognize, the shape and function of the available
genres at work within a given academic discipline can provide insight into the prevailing
values and habits of that intellectual community. What’s more, genres may seem to have
lives of their own; genres can be treated as autonomous structures that constrain the
functions of the intellectual communities that use them. Accordingly, Hymes and Fought
attribute Chomsky’s success as a rhetor in part to his ability to hijack the postBloomfieldians’ repertoire of genres of technical scholarship; they suggest that Chomsky
succeeded in part because he was able to appropriate and refocus the goals of the “three
genres which had been established as central to linguistics by the Bloomfieldians” (123).
However, as several scholars have noted, very few people outside of committed
generative grammarians actually take the time to read Chomsky’s or other generative
grammarians’ technical scholarship. Indeed, as Sampson observes, “only a fraction of …
people … are likely to have read more than a token few paragraphs of [Chomsky’s]
writing. They read secondary paperbacks and journalism by other writers, who simplified
the master’s message while sometimes glossing over the problems within it” (The
‘Language Instinct’ Debate 13). While popularizers of Chomsky’s work,207 including,
quite prominently, Chomsky himself, 208 have brought the master’s work to a broader
academic audience, they have, however, along the way had to strategically reframe and
simplify its propositions in order to meet with the needs of broader audiences. (Indeed,
See, for example, Pinker’s The Language Instinct.
Indeed, as early as his 1966 and 1968 books Cartesian Linguistics and Language and Mind,
we see Chomsky producing texts arguably designed more to secure the place of his linguistic
theories among a broader academic audience than to influence syntactic theory.
207
208
Oenbring / 200
the widespread scientific prestige of generative grammar can, at least in part, be tied to
the success of these popularizations.) As Seuren (2004: 14) argues, textbooks by
generative grammarians sympathetic to Chomsky are often no better, deferring to
Chomsky and/or providing oversimplified examples.209
As all of this suggests, there is a clear buffer layer between the habitual forms of
practice in articles aimed at technical audiences and what non-specialists actually get the
opportunity to read (and understand). Conversely, within the specific technical discourse
of generative grammarians, there exist, as in any academic discipline, certain conventions
guiding what constitutes acceptable writing (and knowledge). These conventions
include: what counts as proper evidence, what counts as a proper raison d’etre for an
article, the forms of exposition that are used, what sources are used, etc. Over the history
of generative grammar, the technical scholarship of generative grammar has continued
through the work of motivated specialists working with a highly specific set of problems
and methods, with the set of problems and methods guided by and inspired by
Chomsky’s technical works.
In the coming two chapters, I intend put the important features of the various
genres in which generative scholarship is manifested in relief by juxtaposing several of
these different forms of writing, thereby providing evidence for the prevailing ideologies
and beliefs of the communities that use those texts. As such, this chapter is, in part, an
intervention into the area of rhetorical scholarship known as popularization studies: the
What’s more, Chomsky’s followers are, as a whole, quite rhetorically well-behaved; they
follow the master’s cues and rehash his talking points when presenting their ideas to nonbelievers.
209
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study of how scholarly findings and knowledge claims are reformulated and rereported in
order to meet with the needs of non-specialist audiences.
The genres that I analyze in the next two chapters include both Chomsky’s own
repertoire of styles and several of the most important genres produced by the broader
community of generative grammarians and linguists. With the former texts, I am
interested in how Chomsky has reframed his ideas in order to meet with the needs of
different audiences. With the later, what I am interested in is the dominant modes of
exposition in these important genres, as well as how these other linguists have
represented and confronted Chomsky’s works and person — and what ideological
function their representations of Chomsky serve. The specific genres that I analyze are:
the mature generative grammar research article (something Chomsky himself has
produced few, if any, of); the linguistics textbook, with specific attention to how
generative grammar and Chomsky himself have been represented; Chomsky’s technical
texts aimed at the community of generative grammarians; and, lastly, his texts aimed at a
more general academic audience. (I also touch twice upon the features of Chomsky’s
political texts in order to further my analyses of Chomsky’s repertoire of genres, and his
strategic use of that repertoire.)
Finally, in these chapters I offer for the first time a handful of empirical measures
in support of my analyses — something I do in the interest of offering more empirically
scrupulous support for claims than is present in the other chapters, where, due to the
broad nature of the themes being brought together, intuitionist hermeneutics runs the
show. The empirical measures that I offer include a brief study of citation counts of
Oenbring / 202
Chomsky’s particular publications in the technically-focused and firmly Chomskyan
journal Linguistic Inquiry, as well as a short corpus linguistic study of the unique features
of Chomsky’s different genres. The corpus study includes quantitative measures of
language patterns in different groups of text, divided according to the genre distinctions
that I posit in the coming two chapters (i.e., I have developed a corpus of texts for each of
Chomsky’s technical, general academic, and political genres). While corpus studies do
have their own limitations, including being limited by the practitioners of the studies’
choices for what to include in the corpora, oftentimes producing more banal than
interesting findings, I have included the corpus study in the interest of including more
empirically scrupulous methods in these chapters than I do other places in this study.
The textual features that I search the corpora for include statistics such as average
sentence length, keywords (common words in one corpus in comparison to another), and
3-grams (reoccurring strings of three words).
Genre Theory and Rhetorical Criticism
In order to theorize the salient features of the different texts I analyze, I have, for
the purposes of these chapters, introduced the notion of genre, a term that has seen an
explosion of interest among literary and rhetorical theorists in recent decades (see, for
example, Bakhtin [1986], Swales [1990], Berkenkotter and Huckin [1995], and Bawarshi
[2003], among others). The term genre as it is used in contemporary rhetorical theory is,
of course, somewhat different from the popular understanding of the term, the latter being
generally reserved for literary or artistic genres. As Swales (1990) suggests, the notion of
Oenbring / 203
genre is today “used to refer to a distinctive category of discourse of any type, spoken or
written, with or without literary aspirations” (Swales 33). Genres, as contemporary
rhetoricians speak of them are re-occurring, habitual modes of representation that reflect,
through their patterns of language and their governing rhetorical appeals, the goals and
values of the people that use them.
However, as Swales notes, genre remains a “fuzzy concept,” one that one
approaches only with “some trepidation” (33). What Swales and others are concerned
about is how the notion of genre can be used as a facile, convenient label for a group of
texts, groups of texts whose boundaries are necessarily much less clear than is supposed
by the label. As a whole, increased interest in the concept of genre can be seen as part of
a broader phenomenon of postmodern idealism.210 That is to say, postmodern analyses of
culture often rely heavily on dubious reified, autonomous cultural systems. Indeed, our
motivation to speak of autonomous and unique genres stems from the same source as our
desire to posit the existence of autonomous and unique discursive formations (Foucault
[1969 (1972)]), paradigms (Kuhn [1962]), and language-games (Wittgenstein [1953]).
However, I argue that there exist substantive, convincing reasons for positing the
existence of several distinct genres at work among the community of generative
grammarians, as well as within Chomsky’s own scholarship. Indeed, to suggest that
Chomsky has several genres available in his repertoire is not merely to suggest that he
has had several unique topics of which he has been concerned about across his career
(i.e., language and politics) nor is it merely to smack a label on his bodies of text. As
Indeed, as Rorty (1982) notes, postmodern textualists are “spiritual descendents of the
idealists” (140).
210
Oenbring / 204
Swales suggests, genre analysis is valuable “because it is clarificatory, not because it is
classificatory” (37). As a whole, Chomsky’s technical works (e.g., Aspects, Lectures on
Government and Binding, and The Minimalist Program) demonstrate remarkable
consistency across his career in terms of a number of variables: what voices are included,
how evidence is presented, what methods are used, and how findings are reported. These
similarities also exist in Chomksy’s non-technical texts, as well as his political texts, the
body of scholarship for which he is most famous across and outside the academy.211
Genre and Popularization Studies in the Rhetoric of Science
In recent decades, rhetoricians of science have taken an interest in popularization
studies: the study of how the findings of science are translated and rereported in order to
meet with the needs of non-specialists. In their analyses, rhetoricians of science have
traditionally taken popularization as a one-way process of simplification. As Myers
summarizes, traditionally popularization has been understood in the following manner:
“in the course of translation from one discourse to the other, this information not only
changes textual form, but is simplified, distorted, hyped up, and dumbed down” (266).
What’s more, as Shinn and Whitley suggest, usually “popularization is not viewed as part
of the knowledge production and validation process but as something external to research
which can be left to non-scientists, failed scientists or ex-scientists as part of the general
211
Of course, genres are, to a large extent, artificial categories made up by the analyst, and certain
texts that are placed under are the same genre may vary in their prototypicality. Moreover, the
analyst can also posit the existence of subgenres ad infinitum. Nevertheless, I use the categories
that I do in this piece because I believe that there are convincing reasons for positing the genres
that I do.
Oenbring / 205
public relations effort of the research enterprise” (3). For example, rhetorician of science
Fahnestock’s famous 1986 article “Accommodating Science” traces how the findings of
specific scientific articles are rereported and reframed for popular media. Comparing
specific passages, Fahnestock’s article finds that the when the finding of scientific
articles are rereported in popular media hedging is removed and claims are made
stronger, with appeals to the authority of the researchers taking the place of the
researchers’ careful explanations.
More recently, however, rhetoricians of science have argued that understanding
popularization as simply a one-way process of simplification, a one-way information
transfer from specialists to non-specialists, neglects the real complex rhetorical dynamics
at play in the transfer of information from specialists to non-specialists. What’s more,
rhetoricians of science have found that non-technical scholarship can support technical
scholarship. Arguing that discourse analysts and rhetorical critics should see the
boundary between expert and lay discourses as more messy than neat, Myers emphasizes
in a 2003 article “Discourse Studies of Scientific Popularization” that technical and
popular discourses each take place in many genres, with popularization beginning early
in the process of knowledge-building. Specifically, Myers suggests that:
Developing a scientific claim and being a successful scientist require involvement
in a range of genres: talking informally with colleagues, writing proposals that
must be readable and persuasive outside the specialist field, delivering papers and
responding to questions, all of what Hilgartner calls the ‘upstream’ side of a
journal publication (1990: 528). More controversially, the success of a claim
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involves its being cited, featured in review articles (Bazerman and Paradis, 1991),
included in textbooks, and in some cases, reported in the media and in
government policy documents – what Hilgartner calls the ‘downstream’ side of a
journal publication. Just where does popularization start in this stream? In
controversial cases, scientists can dismiss pre-prints, conference talks, review
articles and government reports as simplifications, or they may claim these
parallel forms of publication as embodiments of scientific authority.
Ultimately what Myers is challenging here is the neat boundary between technical and
non-technical discourses and genres. Moreover, he is suggesting that popularization
serves a purpose in undergirding the claims of technical scholarship.
As an addition to discussions surrounding popularization in rhetoric of science,
these chapters hope to support claims that non-technical scholarship can and does play a
role in supporting technical inquiry — something that is especially the case with highly
theoretical strands of scholarship. Moreover, with the coming two chapters, I hope to
develop interest in cases of quasi-popularization: the study of how the findings of
technical scholarship are reported for general academic audiences and/or for students.
The Research Article in Generative Grammar
It is an interesting fact that Chomsky, despite being the most influential scholar in
the field of generative grammar, has produced few, if any, straightforward generative
Oenbring / 207
research articles.212 His job is to present grand theoretical frameworks; it is the job of
others to engage in scrupulous empirical studies. Nevertheless, there have developed
forums with conventions for writing within the technical discourse of generative
grammarians, and budding scholars must enact these conventions in order to be granted
access to the community. That is to say, although Chomsky may not have to enact these
conventions, these conventions still have power.
Of linguistics journals with a Chomskyan bent, the most Chomskyan journal is
Linguistic Inquiry — a journal put out, not surprisingly, by MIT press. As Linguistic
Inquiry is the most prototypical of Chomskyan journals, I take all of my examples of the
generative grammar research article from its pages, focusing on one particular issue for
the purposes of my analysis. For my analysis, I close read all of the research articles of a
particular issue of Linguistic Inquiry, specifically the Spring, 1986 issue (at or near the
apogee of GB / P and P). My focus on this particular issue is to give a representative, yet
manageable, sample of generative research articles (but also is designed in order to give a
sense of the mature generative research article).213
Released quarterly since 1970, Linguistic Inquiry has, since the beginning,
demonstrated deference to Chomsky, as my coming citation study demonstrates. Indeed,
the place that Chomsky and his revolution play in the identity of the journal is enshrined
1977’s “Filters and Control” (with Lasnik) and 1980’s “On Binding,” both, not surprisingly,
published in Linguistic Inquiry, are as close as Chomsky has gotten to straightforward research
articles.
213
The complete Linguistic Inquiry style sheet (the current one being used without modification
since 1996) can be accessed here: http://mitpress.mit.edu/journals/LING/li-style.pdf.
212
Oenbring / 208
in the very first issue. The “Statement of Purpose” of the first issue of Linguistic Inquiry
begins:
with the publication of Noam Chomsky’s Syntactic Structures in 1957, the field
of Linguistics began to undergo certain radical changes. Most notable has been
the appearance of transformational generative grammar as a serious candidate for
an adequate theory of human language. Since that time, our knowledge has
grown tremendously within the field of Linguistics and this knowledge has
already begun to have an impact on a number of other fields, among them
Anthropology, Acoustics, Biology, Literature, Mathematics, Philosophy,
Psychology, and the Psychology, and the Psychopathy of Language. This impact
has created the need for an intellectual platform where all of these fields can come
together for the purpose of exploring the ability of Man to manipulate symbols.
Linguistic Inquiry will attempt to provide such a platform. (1)
It is interesting to note that although the effect of the journal has been to build a forum for
highly technical and inaccessible discussion among committed generative grammarians,
the Statement of Purpose of LI claims that goal of the journal is to build
interdisciplinarity. What’s more, while “exploring the ability of Man to manipulate
symbols” is a seemingly stately goal — and seems to invite broader participation — it is
certainly a much more lyrical approach to human language than has ever been adopted by
Oenbring / 209
generative grammarians214 organized as a community of scholars by the autonomy of
syntax thesis.215
Table 1 presents the findings of a short citation count study of references to
Chomsky in the Linguistic Inquiry that I have conducted. In the study, I tallied the total
number of citations of particular publications by Chomsky for entire years in the main
research articles in Linguistic Inquiry. Measuring every five year from 1971 to 2006, the
goal of the study is to gauge the influence of each of Chomsky’s publications at particular
points in time. While the findings of the study are suggestive, the sample size is it too
small to be conclusive; we cannot infer too much from the evidence presented.
Nonetheless, it would be interesting to engage a similar study of patterns of citation in
other linguistics journals. A particularly telling journal to focus on would be Language,
the main journal of the Linguistic Society of America, a journal that has been in existence
since the days of Bloomfield. With such a study, one could gauge the time at which
Chomsky’s work became part of the mainstream of linguistics and the relative influence
of Chomsky’s works upon the field over time.
In fact, “the ability of Man to manipulate symbols” calls to mind rhetorician *gasp* Kenneth
Burke’s definition of man as “the symbol using animal” (1966: 3).
215
It is also interesting to note that the first true article in Linguistic Inquiry is a piece of literary
criticism by venerable old Jakobson, a piece that does not cite Chomsky at all, but is followed by
several pieces beholden to Chomsky. In this regard, Jakobson’s article functions in a way as an
epigraph.
214
Oenbring / 210
Citations of Chomsky by Publication by Year in Linguistic Inquiry
Articles with no references to
Chomsky
Syntactic Structures (1957)
"Finitary Models of Language
Use" (1963) (with Miller)
Current Issues in Linguistics
Theory/"Logical Basis" (1964)
"A Transformational Approach
to Syntax" (1964)
Aspects of the Theory of Syntax
(1965)
"Some Controversial Questions"
(1965) (with Halle)
"The Formal Nature of
Language" (1967)
Language and Mind (1968)
The Sound Pattern of English
(1968) (with Halle)
"Some Empirical Issues" (1969)
"Remarks on Nominalization"
(1970)
"Deep Structure, Surface
Structure" (1970)
Studies on Semantics in
Generative Grammar (1972)
"Conditions on
Transformations" (1973)
The Amherst Lectures (1974)
"Questions of Form and
Interpretation" (1974)
The Logical Structure of
Linguistic Theory (1975)
"Conditions on Rules of
Grammar" (1976)
Reflections on Language (1976)
"Filters and Control" (1977)
(with Lasnik)
"On wh-movement" (1977)
Rules on Representations
1971
1976
1981
1
1
1
3
2
1
5
5
1986 1991 1996 2001 2006
1
2
4
1
1
1
3
1
1
2
5
2
1
1
1
5
2
2
1
5
4
3
3
2
1
3
2
1
2
1
1
5
2
1
4
1
1
1
1
1
2
2
1
1
1
2
1
1
2
2
2
1
1
1
1
2
1
1
2
4
3
1
1
Oenbring / 211
(1980)
"On binding" (1980)
Lectures on Government and
Binding (1981)
"Markedness and Core
Grammar" (1981)
Some Concepts and
Consequences (1982)
Knowledge of Language (1986)
Barriers (1986)
"Some Notes on the Economy"
(1991)
"A Minimalist Program for
Linguistic Theory" (1993)
"Bare phrase structure" (1994)
The Minimalist Program (1995)
(including 1993 w/ Lasnik)
"Minimalist Inquiries: The
Framework" (2000)
"Derivations by Phase" (2001)
4
4
2
10
1
2
1
3
7
1
3
6
6
1
3
4
1
7
4
1
3
5
1
5
2
5
3
3
2
4
14
3
8
6
3
3
9
1
6
4
1
Table 1
Table 1 clearly supports the claim that certain of Chomsky’s texts have come to
dominate the disciplinary imagination of technical generative linguistics at any one time.
Note the relatively high number of citations of Aspects and SPE through the seventies up
until the early eighties when Lectures on Government and Binding takes over. Lectures
remains dominant until Chomsky begins to articulate his next epistemological rupture
with his Minimalist Program. If total number of articles per year with no citations of
Chomsky can be used to gauge the degree of Chomsky’s stranglehold on the disciplinary
identity of generative linguistics, we can see three minor nadirs in Chomsky’s influence
on the field: the late seventies through 1981 (the influence of Lectures cannot be gauged
by articles published that calendar year), the early nineties (1991), and recently (2006).
Oenbring / 212
Table 1 also provides empirical support for my claim that certain of Chomsky’s
texts have had greater influence on broader academic audiences than they have had on
practicing generative grammarians. Indeed, conspicuously lacking from the chart are
pieces in what I call in this study Chomsky’s historical/philosophical genre, his texts
aimed at a general academic audience (e.g., Cartesian Linguistics, Language and Mind,
On Nature and Language). Despite the fact that Cartesian Linguistics and Language and
Mind are, for certain, Chomsky’s two most important texts of sixties after Aspects and
SPE, Table 1 shows only one citation of Language and Mind and none of Cartesian
Linguistics for all the years covered.
Linguistic Inquiry (Spring, 1986)
The Spring, 1986 issue of Linguistic Inquiry contains four full research articles,
and, as always, a “Remarks and Replies” section and a “Squibs and Discussion” section.
However, I have limited the scope of my analysis to the research articles. These articles
are: Epstein’s “The Local Binding Condition and LF Chains,” a piece that attempts to
tweak a particular condition proposed by Chomsky; McCarthy’s “OCP Effects:
Gemination and Antigemination,” a rather technical analysis of what is called the
Obligatory Contour Principle in phonology; Williams’ “A Reassignment of the Functions
of LF,” a piece that proposes a manipulation of a grammatical model that is itself a
manipulation of the model presented in Lectures; and, finally, Woolford’s “The
Distribution of Empty Nodes in Navajo: A Mapping Approach,” a piece that advocates
the addition of a parameterized subsystem called mapping as a way to account for
Oenbring / 213
empirical facts in a handful of different languages. In the following paragraphs I present
a handful of specific rhetorical and textual features present in these articles that I believe
to be representative of the broader genre of the generative research article.
First and foremost, Epstein’s “The Local Binding Condition and LF Chains” is an
attempt to redefine a notion that Chomsky first presents in a text that would become
Knowledge of Language.216 Following common practice, the raison d’être of the piece is
to fix a perceived problem in Chomsky’s governing work(s) of the time period; Epstein
establishes the relevance of the analysis and grounds the piece by beginning the article by
invoking recent work by Chomsky. Epstein begins the piece with the seemingly prosaic
acknowledgement that “following Chomsky (1981), Chomsky (1984) proposes the
following condition on chains … (1) The Local Binding Condition” (187). Epstein
continues later on the same page, suggesting that “in this article I will attempt to reveal
certain empirical problems that emerge under the Local Binding Condition. I will show
that under a particular LF analysis proposed in Chomsky (1984), certain LF A-chains,
required by the θ-Criterion, are incorrectly precluded by the Local Binding Condition”
(187). As this suggests, the ultimate goal of the piece is to provide a new, alternative
definition of local binding.
While Epstein offers several other references to Chomsky, the article as a whole is
more beholden to Chomsky than is apparent in the direct references. That is to say, the
article is largely a confrontation and an elaboration on methods presented in Lectures and
under the extended standard theory. After the introduction, the piece has four numbered
216
Epstein refers to Knowledge of Language here as “Chomsky (1984).”
Oenbring / 214
subheading sections. These are: “1. Evidence for a Local Binding Condition,” where
Epstein presents the rationales given for the Local Binding Condition in work by
Chomsky’s collaborators Lasnik and Rizzi; “2. LF A-Chains,” where Epstein
problematizes the Local Binding Condition as presented in Chomsky’s recent work, in its
interaction with the equally theory-internal notion of LF; “3. Solutions,” where, not
surprisingly, Epstein offers two possible ways to reformulate the Local Binding
Condition; and, finally, “4. Summary and Discussion,” where Epstein engages in a brief,
yet still highly technical, discussion of the broader implications of the findings of the
piece for the GB / P and P model.
While Epstein’s article is, for certain, ruled by the author’s novel interpretation
throughout the piece, the setup of Epstein’s article, like many research articles in
generative grammar, pays deference to the inductive-appearing setup of the IMRD217
research article used in many scientific fields.218 That is to say, Epstein’s piece moves
from an analysis of methods at the beginning of the article to a specific
finding/prescription nearing the end. Specifically, Epstein’s piece begins with an
overview of current practice in the field (analogous to the introduction), continues with a
long analysis of current research methods (somewhat analogous to methods), follows
with a suggestion regarding how to improve current practice (this taking the place of the
much less-judgment laden straightforward presentation of results in the scientific
research article), and ends with a discussion of the broader relevance of theories
Introduction, Methods, Results, Discussion — sometimes preceded by an Abstract and/or
followed by a Conclusion.
218
For more on the IMRD article, see Bazerman (1981).
217
Oenbring / 215
discussed (discussion). As such, the writing techniques of Epstein’s piece can be
understood as a fusion of the evidence and reasoning techniques of exposition used
academic articles in fields like mathematics and philosophy and the IMRD setup that
rules natural science research articles.219
As the focus of McCarthy’s “OCP Effects” is explicitly on phonology, it is not
surprising that the only piece by Chomsky that the piece cites is The Sound Pattern of
English,220 the foundational text of generative phonology. This is true of many articles in
generative phonology. McCarthy’s specific citation of SPE occurs as part of a discussion
of the notion of evaluation metrics:
Deriving the OCP from the evaluation metric runs into equally serious conceptual
problems. Familiarity with the term “evaluation metric” has led to rather loose
use of it – we forget that several very different, specific hypotheses have gone
under this name. I assume, however, that the evaluation metric intended to derive
the OCP is the one defined in Chomsky and Halle (1968), where the value of a
grammar is inversely related to the number of nonredundant symbols (= features)
in its rules and lexicon. Granted, counting phonological features alone give us the
same result for (87a) and (87b) as the OCP (although as a preference rather than
an absolute prohibition), but this is a perversion of Chomsky and Halle’s original
intention. (254)
219
While similar section headings are common in articles in LI, such section headings are by no
means necessary.
220
Indeed, my citation count study has suggested, not surprisingly, that if an article in Linguistic
Inquiry only cites one publication by Chomsky, that publication is most likely to be SPE.
Oenbring / 216
What McCarthy is lamenting here is other linguists’ “loose use” of the term evaluation
metric, a notion institutionalized by SPE. McCarthy claims that these other
interpretations are “a perversion of Chomsky and Halle’s original intention.” In effect,
what McCarthy is suggesting here is that linguists having been using the notion of
evaluation metric as what rhetorician Kenneth Burke has called a god-term,221 a vaguely
defined term to which one must pay deference (e.g., freedom, justice). (Of course, godterm could easily be replaced by what I have called in this study Chomsky’s points of
identity.) Nevertheless, McCarthy claims access to Chomsky and Halle’s original
intentions in SPE, in order to support his own reading of the Obligatory Contour
Principle.
Like Epstein’s piece, the goal of Williams’ “The Reassignment of the Functions
of LF” is to tinker with a model ultimately stemming from Chomsky’s Lectures (but in
this case Williams is commenting on a variant of the model presented in Lectures
presented in a 1981 article by Van Riemsdijk and Williams [what Williams refers to as
“VR&W”]). Williams’ piece demonstrates clearly a stylistic tick common throughout
generative grammar research articles (a tick common in Chomsky’s work as well):
overuse of intialisms. Williams, for example, suggests without flinching that “we may
think of SA and QR as deriving LF in the VR&W and GB accounts, respectively” (267).
While such intialisms are clearly useful in helping generative grammarians avoid always
restating full phraseology like the extended standard theory, we can certainly say that
generative grammarians have fetishized these intialisms. Indeed, at times it seems that the
221
See, for example, Burke’s The Rhetoric of Religion.
Oenbring / 217
only reason for generative grammarians use of these intialisms is to build
scientific/technical allure of their analyses and/or to exclude outsiders from
understanding their message.222 That is to say, one of the functions of these initialisms is
to set up boundaries for the community of generative grammarians.
Woolford’s “The Distribution of Empty Nodes in Navajo: A Mapping Approach”
is an example of an article proposing a parameter (specifically in this case a
parameterized subsystem) to Universal Grammar. In the piece, Woolford builds towering
proposals based on analysis of a handful of constructions in disparate languages, all
leading to a proposal to make an addition to the Lectures model. Woolford claims that
“the Navajo data, along with similar unexplained restrictions on internal gaps in English,
French, Toba Batak, and Modern Irish, can be accounted for in a straightforward manner
within Government-Binding Theory (Chomsky [1981]) if one fairly simple parameterized
subsystem, mapping, is added” (301). With any and all languages fair game for theory
building, Woolford can cherry pick examples seemingly without bound. Nonetheless, in
the end, the parameterized subsystem that Woolford suggests is rather abstract and theory
internal.
Other common features of research articles in Linguistic Inquiry that I have not
touched on include: short paragraphs, due in part, but not in total, to large numbers of
example sentences set off from the main body of the paragraph (Epstein’s piece has a
ratio of 2.4 sentences per paragraph); numbered section headings, adding to the
technical/scientific ethos of the work (this is stipulated by the Linguistic Inquiry style
222
Nevertheless, I, as you may have noticed, have also used these initialisms when I have found
them convenient.
Oenbring / 218
sheet); frequent use of branching syntactic trees; frequent use (and overuse) of Greek
letters (following Chomsky); and, finally, appendices explaining in full, the details of
models proposed in other articles that, if they had been included in the reasoning of the
article proper, would have interrupted the flow of the reasoning (Willimas’ piece, for
example, has two appendices outlining “Pesetsky’s [1985] Argument for LF” and “May’s
[1985] Argument for LF”).
Generative Grammar in Linguistics Textbooks
Discipline fixes; it arrests or regulates movements; it clears up confusion; it dissipates
compact groupings of individuals wandering about the country in unpredictable ways.
Foucault, Discipline and Punish
As many scholars have noted (see, for example, Loewen [1996]), textbooks serve
an ideological function, legitimating the concerns of those with power; textbooks tell
stories meant to authorize the concerns of those individuals and groups with power.
Textbooks also bring order and intelligibility to academic fields: they constitute fields as
disciplines. In this section, I attempt a brief genealogy of university linguistics textbooks
(both general introductory textbooks and those with a specific focus on generative
syntax) from Bloomfield’s Language on, paying special attention to what place Chomsky
and generative grammar play in the texts.
As my historical survey of linguistics textbooks demonstrates, the elements of
Chomsky’s work that have been presented in general introductory textbooks have
Oenbring / 219
remained largely unchanged since the early seventies; an accepted — and clearly
ideological — distillation of the practices and methods of generative grammarians,
developed for the purpose of teaching those methods to students, has been in place in
linguistics textbooks since the sixties and seventies. This accepted distillation puts
emphasis on several of the more simple and alluring elements of the model of generative
grammar as presented by Chomsky in the fifties and sixties (specifically the notions of
phrase structure rules, transformations, and surface structure / deep structure). These
elements remain in current textbooks despite the fact that many of these elements were
reformulated by Chomsky decades ago and are no longer central elements of current
practice. Furthermore, introductory linguistics textbooks seem to overrepresent the
importance of Syntactic Structures; Chomsky’s 1957 book has served as a stabilized
point of origin/identity in telling the story of generative grammar to initiates even long
after the book has ceased to hold an important place in technical scholarship. (Indeed,
Syntactic Structures hardly shows up in my citation study of technical articles.)
Accordingly, the sixties and seventies are overrepresented in my sample, as that is the
time that this ideological formation developed.
Although not explicitly designed for pedagogical purposes, Bloomfield’s 1933
masterpiece Language served for a generation as the most important North American
linguistics textbook.223 A useful introduction to linguistics even today, Language has
specific chapters devoted to almost every major topic of study in contemporary
linguistics, with dedicated chapters focusing on all of the following: phonemes; phonetics
223
In fact, Language is still in print today.
Oenbring / 220
(in a chapter called “Types of Phonemes”); morphology; semantics; dialect geography;
sound change; the Comparative Method (basically 19th century historical linguistics);
speech communities (an early form of what would later be called sociolinguistics);
borrowing; writing systems; and, yes, even syntax. That is to say, Language established
the standard and many of the conventions for the genre of linguistics textbooks.224
It is an interesting (and, as I note later, quite ironic) fact that in all probability, the
first linguistics textbook to present an element of Chomsky’s work is Hockett’s 1958 A
Course in Modern Linguistics.225 Ambitious in scope, it is clear that the goal of Hockett’s
book is to be its generation’s Language. Hockett’s probable presentation of Chomsky’s
work takes place in a chapter surprisingly titled “Surface and Deep Grammar.”226 (Recall
that Chomsky did not use the terms surface structure and deep structure in print until
Current Issues and Aspects.) In this particular chapter, Hockett divides between surface
grammar (“the most apparent layer” in “network of structural relationships between
forms” [249]) and deep grammar (which has “much to do with how we speak and
understand but which [is] still largely unexplored, in any systematic way, by
grammarians” [249]). The main examples that Hockett focuses on come from Chinese,
and these examples do not appear indebted to Chomsky’s works. The few examples from
English that Hockett offers are, however, suggestive (see, for example, Hockett’s
Bloch and Trager’s 1942 Outline of Linguistic Analysis, a definitive textbook of the postBloomfieldian era, pares the number of topics approached down to a core set of formal methods.
Bloch and Trager devote specific chapters to phonetics, phonemics, morphology and syntax (with
more space devoted to the former two topics, in accord with post-Bloomfieldian concerns).
225
I say in all probability because there is no definitive evidence to prove that Hockett was
attempting to present a version of Chomsky’s framework.
226
While other scholars have noted the strangeness of the appearance of this divide in Hockett’s
1958 book (see, for example, Lee (1996: 58), Newmeyer (1980 [1986: 74]), and Graffi (2001:
218), none have offered a satisfactory explanation for its appearance.
224
Oenbring / 221
analyses of she’s singing and she’s running). As Graffi notes, Hockett’s concerns in the
chapter appear “very similar to transformational treatments” (Graffi 218) (i.e., those
models proposed by Chomsky). Nevertheless, Hockett makes no direct references to
Chomsky (or any other scholars) in the chapter227 (despite listing Syntactic Structures as
a reference in the bibliography, a book cited no place else in the text).
Recall that the affix-hopping model presented in Syntactic Structures encoded in a
very real way a version of what would eventually become the deep structure / surface
structure dichotomy. That is to say, it certainly is possible that Hockett’s chapter was
directly inspired by Syntactic Structures, a book published the year before. What exactly
inspired Hockett to write his chapter on “Surface and Deep Grammar,” we can never
know. Nevertheless, I would like to make a cautious proposal that Hockett what is
engaging in the “Surface and Deep Grammar” chapter is, in part, distilling Chomsky’s
Syntactic Structures model for presentation to an audience of non-linguists.228
Of course, that Hockett may have been the first expositor of Chomsky’s work for
a non-academic audience is quite ironic, seeing that much of Hockett’s scholarship from
the sixties on was devoted to arguing against Chomsky’s program. Following this
proposal further, we are led to the possibility that Chomsky himself may have been
inspired by Hockett’s divide between surface grammar and deep grammar in his later
formulation of the surface structure / deep structure dichotomy (for evidence see Current
227
However, due to the pedagogical nature of the text, Hockett gives very few references to
primary sources anywhere in the book.
228
Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations is another possible source for the notion of “deep
grammar,” but it is not listed as a source in Hockett’s book.
Oenbring / 222
Issues 30).229 That is to say, there is a good possibility that one of Chomsky’s most
famous ideas was, in fact, first formulated (admittedly in protean form230) by a linguist
who spent most of his later career critiquing Chomsky in order to facilitate that linguist in
explaining Chomsky’s ideas to an audience of non-specialists; it is possible that the
surface structure / deep structure dichotomy itself is, in large part, a popularization.
While the evidence that Hockett’s deep grammar was an attempt to popularize the
specific model presented in Chomsky’s Syntactic Structures is only suggestive (but is,
nonetheless the hypothesis that I favor), there is, however, more evidence to suggest that
Hockett’s deep grammar model is something developed specifically for the purpose of
presenting then contemporary grammatical theory to an audience of students. For one,
Hockett admits that the related notion of valence231 also presented in the “Surface
Grammar” chapter is “not technical” and is also “metaphorical” (249); Hockett more or
less admits that he is uses a key term in the “Surface Grammar” chapter specifically for
the purpose of explanation.
What’s more, despite asserting that what he is offering is not popularization,
Hockett notes in the preface of A Course that he has taken some creative license with
current scholarship, presumably for the purposes of presenting current linguists’ methods
to an audience of non-specialists. Hockett states in the preface that:
229
Indeed, Chomsky notes in Current Issues that the divide between surface grammar and deep
grammar is analogous to the divide between observational and descriptive adequacy.
Specifically, Chomsky sates that “the difference between observational and descriptive adequacy
is related to the distinction drawn by Hockett (1958) between “surface grammar” and “deep
grammar”, and he is unquestionably correct in noting that modern linguistics is largely confined
in scope to the former” (30).
230
i.e., deep grammar rather than deep structure
231
The notion of valence can, however, be traced back to the work of Tesnière (see, for example,
[1953] and [1959]).
Oenbring / 223
This book is intended for those college students who take an introductory course
in linguistics. If others find interest or entertainment in the work, the author will
be delighted; but it is not a “popularization,” … The duty of the writer of a
textbook is not to explore frontiers or indulge in flights of fancy, but to present, in
as orderly a way as he can, the generally accepted facts and principles of the field.
Nonetheless — and for this I must apologize — on some topics my enthusiasm
and involvement have certainly led me to speak more emphatically than our
current knowledge warrants. (vii)
Throughout his career, Hockett cultivated the rhetorical persona of a crusty old
conservative, and this quote no doubt makes moves in that direction. Nevertheless, in a
fascinating rhetorical maneuver, Hockett invokes the crusty old conservative, all while
admitting that he is going to take creative liberties and “speak more emphatically than our
current knowledge warrants.”232
As the sixties went on, textbooks began to present Chomsky’s technical model in
more depth, increasingly tying that model to Chomsky’s person. Gleason’s (1961)
textbook An Introduction to Descriptive Linguistics, the second edition of a book
originally published in 1955, is a good example of early sixties reception of Chomsky in
textbooks. Paying attention to recent developments in the field, the second edition
Newmeyer’s brief analysis of Hockett’s “Surface and Deep Grammar” chapter, furthermore,
leads directly into an analysis of the ideological effects that the notion of deep structure may
invite among an audience of non-specialists. Newmeyer suggests that:
Even Charles Hockett (1958: 246) had (uncharacteristically) referred to the “deep grammar” of a
sentence, as distinct from its “surface grammar.” Nevertheless, the term “deep structure” has had
the unfortunate effect of inviting a metaphorical interpretation by the linguistically
unsophisticated. (74)
232
Oenbring / 224
includes revised chapters devoted to each of syntax and transformations. Although the
version of the transformations presented by the book appears to be a mix of Harris’ and
Chomsky’s attitudes toward transformations, Gleason maintains that model presented is
primarily owing to Chomsky (492). Nevertheless, while Gleason claims to present
Chomsky’s methods, the text does not by any means go out of its way to enact deference
to Chomsky; the text does not authorize the methods that it presents on the basis of the
fact that they stem from Chomsky.
The first specialized textbook focused on presenting generative grammar is
Bach’s An Introduction to Transformational Grammar (1964), a volume that makes clear
from the beginning that it is beholden to Chomsky, in particular the model of Syntactic
Structures. In fact, the preface of the book begins, “since the publication of Noam
Chomsky’s Syntactic Structures in 1957” (v). While Bach’s textbook includes a handful
of displays of deference to Chomsky’s person, with the whole book being largely a
presentation of the model of Syntactic Structures, Bach does not legitimate the findings
presented in the book because they come from Chomsky as an individual. That is to say,
unlike many later linguistics textbooks, the mode of exposition of Bach’s book is not
here’s what Chomsky believes and you should learn it.
Following the narrative arch presented in Syntactic Structures, Bach’s
Introduction offers a complete chapter on “Phrase Structure Rules,” only to problematize
the limitations of such rules nearing the end of the section. Like in Syntactic Structures,
however, a chapter on “Grammatical Transformations” swoops in in order to save the
model from collapse. (Recall that phrase structure rules were, in large part, created by the
Oenbring / 225
mid-fifties Chomsky as something to argue against; phrase structure rules were largely a
rhetorically-created straw man that Chomsky developed to facilitate his exposition in
Syntactic Structures.) While Bach’s extended presentation of the model presented in
Syntactic Structures in his 1964 Introduction is understandable given that Chomsky had
yet to release his defining publications of the sixties (Aspects and SPE), other textbooks
have maintained Bach’s expository technique (of focusing on phrase structure rules
followed by transformations — what I call the Syntactic Structures narrative) well past
the end of Syntactic Structure’s dominance of the methods of generative grammarians.
Indeed, the revolution, specifically located in the publication of Syntactic Structures, has
become oft-promoted point of origin/identity in introductory linguistics textbooks.233
What Bach’s Introduction had done for Syntactic Structures, Jacobs and
Rosenbaum’s 1968 English Transformational Grammar did for the Aspects model. While
the terminology is updated to reflect Chomsky’s mid-sixties concerns, the book is as a
whole similar to Bach’s. The book as a whole foregrounds what I have called the
ideological distillation of Chomsky’s work: its central leitmotifs are the notions of
transformations and the surface structure / deep structure divide. English
Transformational Grammar seems particularly enamored with the notion of deep
structure; it serves as the goal of the examples presented. Indeed, the end of chapter
Of course, not all textbooks in the sixties place great emphasis on Chomsky’s project and
person. Robbins’ 1965 textbook General Linguistics: An Introductory Survey, for example, only
speaks of Chomsky or his project four times, with two of these being in footnotes. Robbins
offers a brief discussion of “Transformational Analysis,” but what he describes is much closer to
Harris’ version of the transformation than Chomsky’s. Hughes’ The Science of Language (1962)
makes no mention of Chomsky’s work, but lists Syntactic Structures as suggested further reading.
233
Oenbring / 226
exercises of Jacobs and Rosenbaum’s textbook are chock full of examples that ask the
student to do something like “show in how the deep structure for 2c is converted into the
surface structure” (126).
Like Bach’s Introduction, the Jacobs and Rosenbaum’s book is more in debt to
Chomsky than is apparent from the authors’ early direct nods to Chomsky (see viii and
4). For example, Jacobs and Rosenbaum make it clear in the preface that the goal of
transformational grammar is to uncover “the set of principles, called linguistic universals,
which allow us to describe what we, as native speakers of English, know about our
language intuitively” (v). This is phrasing more or less directly borrowed from
Chomsky.234 However, as Chomsky was not yet a pan-academic authority, Jacobs and
Rosenbaum do not authorize these claims by stating their origin.
Starting with Lyons’ Introduction to Theoretical Linguistics (1969) introductory
textbooks began to tie the specific models they present to Chomsky’s own person and
authority; Chomsky had, by the late sixties, become a pan-academic authority. For
example, in the preface Lyons maintains that he gives “full account of” what he calls
“Chomsky’s system of transformational grammar” (x); Lyons legitimates the system he
presents based on the fact that it stems from Chomsky’s own person. However, Lyons —
a scholar who would go on to write the early hagiographic history of generative grammar
What’s more, at several point in the text, Jacobs and Rosenbaum make the claim that recent
discoveries by generative grammarians are recovering a line of inquiry into the study of language
that has its origin in Descartes, claims made by Chomsky in 1966 popular-focused text Cartesian
Linguistics. Jacobs and Rosenbaum claim, also invoking what historians of generative grammar
have called the eclipsing stance, for example, that “more has been learned in the past fifteen years
about the organization of human linguistic knowledge than any time since the seventeenth
century when similar questions were addressed by French philosophers and grammarians under
the intellectual leadership of Descartes” (vi).
234
Oenbring / 227
Noam Chomsky (1970) — goes further than Bach; Lyons ties the legitimacy of the
methods he presents to Chomsky’s person as he presents them across the text, not just in
the early pages of the book.235
By the 1970s, displays of deference to Chomsky had become established
conventions, part and parcel of how generative grammar was presented to students in
many linguistics textbooks. Indeed, such displays of deference became an integral
element of the maturing genre of introductory linguistics textbooks, a genre that remains
largely the same today. A nice example of this solidifying genre is Elgin’s 1973 volume
What is Linguistics?.236 Like previous linguistics textbooks, Elgin’s chapter on syntax
includes: a specific display of deference to Chomsky, and the Syntactic Structures-type
narrative (specifically, a heading analyzing “Phrase Structure Grammar” leading to a
heading devoted to “Deep Structure, Surface Structure, and Transformation”). Moreover,
like many later textbooks, one of the primary goals of Elgin’s syntax chapter seems to be
presenting Chomsky’s distinctive terminology (i.e., what I have elsewhere in this study
called his points of identity and/or his god-terms). For example, Elgin devotes a
235
Lyons devotes a solid fifty pages on generative grammar within a long chapter devoted to
“Grammatical Structure,” using, like Bach, the Syntactic Structures model as a point of
origin/identity. Starting with Bloomfield’s theory of immediate constituents, a theory originally
suggested in Language (itself a quasi-pedagogical text), Lyons guides the reader in “Grammatical
Structure” through phrase structure rules, transformations, etc., eventually ending with an
extended presentation of the analysis of the passive transformation presented in Syntactic
Structures. The result is a narrative similar to Bach’s. However, unlike Bach, Lyons, as I have
suggested, makes references to Chomsky throughout the chapter.
236
Elgin’s relatively brief book is divided into nine chapters, covering: phonology, syntax,
semantics, historical linguistics, psycholinguistics, sociolinguistics, stylistics, and applied
linguistics.
Oenbring / 228
prominent place early in the chapter to the divide between competence and performance.
Later in the chapter Elgin devotes a section to the notion of universal grammar.237
With Chomsky’s star on the rise across the academy, not just in linguistics,
textbooks in adjacent fields began to display deference to Chomsky and to make appeals
to Chomsky’s authority. Thomas’ Transformational Grammar and Teacher of English
(1965) and Liebert’s Linguistics and the New English Teacher (1971) are good examples
of volumes designed for courses preparing English teachers with a central focus on
presenting generative grammar — with Liebert’s text being perhaps right after the
apogee of Chomsky’s prestige in these surrounding fields (i.e., it can be seen as the rear
bookend).238
Following the pattern of other introductory linguistics textbooks, Liebert’s
book presents its own more fully explained and fleshed out version of the Syntactic
Structures model. However, Liebert ends his analysis of generative grammar by hedging,
stating in full caps that “THUS FAR I HAVE SEEN NO CONVINCING EVIDENCE
It is also interesting to note that Elgin includes several quotes from Chomsky’s Language and
Mind (1968), his most famous book where he attempts to describe his theories of language to an
audience of non-linguists. This is a trick of exposition that has been picked up by many other
writers of linguistics textbooks (e.g., Akmajian [1979: xiv], Radford [1998]).
238
Indeed, with generative grammar at an apogee of its prestige, there was widespread optimism
in the late sixties and early seventies that explicit teaching of generative grammar could actually
help students read and write better. After all, such teaching would merely be unlocking codes
already present in students’ brains. Accordingly, exploring the practical side of generative
grammar became the proper object for Ph.D. dissertations in both English and Education studies.
Along the way, generative grammar spawned its own genre of social science sausage factory
dissertation. Education dissertations abounded with titles like: Tavano (1968) The Efficacy of
Administering a Program in Transformational Grammar in Relationship to Composition at the
Junior High School Level; Chandler (1969) The Effect of a Knowledge of Transformational
Grammar upon the Sentence Development of the Junior High School Student; Wills (1969) A
Study of the Effects of Learning Certain Aspects of Transformational Grammar upon the Science
Reading Comprehension of Fifth Grade Pupils; Ross (1970) The Effects of Transformational
Grammar Instruction upon the Sentence Structure of Ninth Grade Students; and Fry (1971) The
Effects of Transformational Grammar upon the Writing Performance of Students of Low Socioeconomic Backgrounds.
237
Oenbring / 229
THAT KNOWLEDGE OF GRAMMAR RULES IS NECESSARY FOR GOOD
USAGE” (196). Indeed, despite early optimism that generative grammar, by unlocking
biological codes already present in children’s minds, would finally get them kids to write
good, by the mid-seventies much of this confidence that generative grammar had much to
offer language and writing instruction had collapsed.
As I have suggested, many of the features of the genre of the basic introductory
linguistics textbook have remained unchanged since the seventies. A good example of a
recent broad introductory linguistics textbook is the eighth edition of Language Files
(2001), put out by the linguistics department of the Ohio State University. Starting in
1977 as a collection of supplementary handouts, Language Files has, over the years,
added more and more traditional textbook apparatus. The eighth edition includes the
following “files” (i.e., chapters): Introductions, Animal Communication, Phonetics,
Phonology, Morphology, Syntax, Semantics, Pragmatics, Pyscholinguistics, Language
Variation, Language Contact, Language Change, Visual Languages, Language and
Computers, and Language in a Wider Context. (It is interesting to compare these chapter
topics with those of Bloomfield’s Language.)
While early textbooks such as Bach’s Introduction and Jacobs and Rosenbaum’s
Transformational Grammar present models beholden to Chomsky throughout, and make
displays of deference, usually in the preface, to Chomsky, throughout most of these early
textbooks the authors do not legitimate the methods that they present based on the fact
that the models come from Chomsky. Nonetheless, these texts worked to build the
foundations of a tradition in linguistics textbooks to claim legitimacy for methods due to
Oenbring / 230
their association with Chomsky. Since the early seventies, there have been two unique
rhetorical strategies that broad introductory textbooks have used for dealing with the fact
that they are essentially presenting the theories of single individual. One strategy is to
actively defer extensively to Chomsky: to treat him as a sage leader. The other is to
normalize the theories presented by avoiding tying the models to Chomsky’s person: to
present the theories presented as the established and unauthored findings of a scientific
field.
For example, following the established distillation of Chomsky’s work I have
presented, the syntax chapter of Language Files 8 includes specific sub-files on both
phrase structure rules and transformations. Like Elgin’s What is Linguistics?, one of the
primary goals of the syntax and psycholinguistics chapters is to introduce the student to
Chomsky’s distinctive concepts and phrases (e.g., recursion, transformation, surface
structure / deep structure, and Universal Grammar). However, despite using such
obviously Chomskyan vocabulary, Language Files 8 avoids explicitly tying the methods
it is presenting to Chomsky’s person. It presents Chomsky’s ideas as the unauthored
findings of a scientific field.
Since Bach (1964) giving students an introduction to generative grammar had the
proper object for entire linguistics textbooks (presumably for specific courses on
generative grammar). While all contemporary textbooks giving an introduction to
orthodox generative grammar demonstrate deference to Chomsky in some form, some
linguistics textbooks are, as Language Files 8 demonstrates, less keen on fanning the
flames of the master’s cult of personality than others. A good example of one of these
Oenbring / 231
less directly obsequious textbooks designed for the purposes of giving students a direct
introduction to generative grammar is Haegeman’s Introduction to Government and
Binding Theory, a book meant, as the name suggests, to introduce the student to GB / P
and P theory. First published in 1991 and in its second edition since 1994, Haegeman’s
Introduction offers students an overview of the main features GB / P and P theory as
defined by Chomsky in Lectures (e.g., case theory and theta theory), but largely avoids,
after the introduction, tying the models presented to Chomsky (or any other scholar); the
models presented are, largely, unauthored. Haegeman paints theoretical constructs as the
established, unauthored findings of a scientific field. 239
An example of a more obsequious contemporary textbook giving an introduction
specifically to generative grammar is Radford’s broadly-used Transformational
Grammar (1988 [1998]). The overriding goal of Transformational Grammar (as well as
his more recent Minimalist Syntax [2004]) is clear: to actively convince you to believe
what the master does. From first page of the main body of the text on, Radford surrounds
the reader in Chomsky’s god-terms / distinctive terminology. In fact, the second sentence
of the first chapter is: “among the notions which will be explained in this chapter are
terms such as theory of language, grammar of a language, particular/universal grammar,
competence, performance, grammaticality, linguistic intuition, rule-governed creativity,
generate, observational/descriptive/explanatory adequacy, constraint, markedness, and
Nevertheless, the introduction of the book states clearly that “the purpose of this book is to
provide and introduction to the mainline version of Government and Binding Theory, or GBtheory, using as a basis Noam Chomsky’s more recent writings” (xx).
239
Oenbring / 232
innateness” (1). As you no doubt now recognize, most of these terms stem directly from
Chomsky — and Radford makes sure that readers of his book know this.
Demonstrating rhetorical awareness, Radford includes numerous large quotes
pulled directly from Chomsky’s publications aimed at a general academic audience, a
trick common throughout the genre of linguistics textbooks. The most notable of these
sources is Chomsky’s influential book Language and Mind (1968 [1972]). Radford
presents the following visionary quote from Chomsky’s Language and Mind on the first
page of his textbook:
There are a number of questions which might lead one to undertake a study of
language. Personally, I am primarily intrigued by the possibility of learning
something, from the study of language that will bring to light inherent properties
of the human mind. (Chomsky 1968 [1972: 103], qtd. in Radford 1988 [1998: 1])
With such attention paid to presentation of Chomsky’s terminology and bold, alluring
ideas, the first chapter of Radford’s book actually closely mirrors what I have called the
world creation pages of Chomsky’s mid-sixties works. Moreover, following Chomsky,
Radford sets up mentalism as a central point of disciplinary identity for scientific
linguistic, tying this interest in mentalism directly to Chomsky’s person. Still on the first
page, Radford suggests that “but why should we be interested in the phenomenon of
Language? Chomsky gives and avowedly mentalist answer to this question” (1,
emphasis Radford’s).
Radford’s book is chocked full of interchanges like this where the possible beliefs
or assumptions of a student/reader are stated in one sentence, only to refute those beliefs
Oenbring / 233
by invoking Chomsky’s authority in the next sentence.240 Later on in the first chapter,
Radford suggests, for example, that “even if the idea of constraining a grammar or theory
is relatively easy to understand, we might still ask why it is important to do so.
Chomsky’s answer is that only a maximally constrained theory of language can lead to
the development of an adequate theory of language acquisition” (34). Indeed, at times
Radford’s exposition seems vaguely reminiscent of a Platonic dialogue, where the reader
plays the interlocutor/Sophist in need of refuting by Chomsky/Socrates. This quasiPlatonic dialogue technique of exposition (what one might also refer to as a I-will-refuteyour-common-sense-by-invoking-the-master method) has been picked up by other
linguistics textbooks. Indeed, it is a not-infrequent feature of the genre.241
Conclusion
As Foucault reminds us in his famous essay “What is an Author?”, contemporary
scientific knowledge is not supposed to be built on the authority of individuals; science is
supposedly unauthored. As we have seen, some scholars have tried to avoid making
extensive appeals to Chomsky’s authority to undergird their claims. Such maneuvers are
no doubt, in part, rhetorical maneuvers to make their findings appear unauthored (i.e., the
findings of an established scientific field). Nevertheless, Chomsky’s person has, over the
decades, played an important role in undergirding claims both within the technical
scholarship of generative grammarians and within textbooks aimed at expressing the
240
These possible beliefs of the reader can either be presented as questions or stated positively.
In fact, Uriagereka’s 1998 textbook supporting the Minimalist Program Rhyme and Reason
actually is in the form of a Platonic dialogue, with the (orthodox Chomskyan) Linguist leading a
discussion with (and ultimately refuting) the smart but misguided non-linguist Other.
241
Oenbring / 234
findings of the field to initiates; Chomsky’s person has played an important role both in
technical scholarship and in popularization.
Indeed, it is clear that appeals to Chomsky’s person have played an important role
in constituting the community of generative grammar, a group of linguistics that have had
a seeming stranglehold on the identity of ‘scientific’ linguistics for decades. Of course,
how these appeals to Chomsky’s authority and person work in the technical scholarship
versus popular-audience focused writing such as textbooks are fundamentally different.
Whereas generative grammarians in their technical scholarship frame their project as
developing one of the elements of Chomsky’s current model, textbook writers often defer
directly to the master, engaging, as it were, in advocacy for Chomsky. As Chomsky
plays a special ideological role in the field of generative grammar, it has been important
that student-initiates to the community of generative linguists (i.e., the next generation of
the professoriate) learn this special place in order to maintain order in the community.
Linguistics textbooks, as I hope to have shown, have played this function well.
Accordingly, we must acknowledge that linguistics textbooks (as they have produced
cohort after cohort of professoriate) have served to support the technical inquiry of
generative grammarians in itself; we must acknowledge that popularizations such as
textbooks have been more than just parasitic to the technical knowledge production.
What’s more, as my analysis of these genres suggests, Chomsky’s project and person has
in both of these forms of writing served as the lynchpin of the community of generative
grammarians; without Chomsky the field would seemingly dissolve into mysteries.
Oenbring / 235
Chapter 6: The Textual Dynamics of Generative Grammar, Part II: Chomsky’s
Genres
Modern studies of animal communication so far offer no counterevidence to the
Cartesian assumption that human language is based on an entirely distinct principle.
Cartesian Linguistics, 1966
I will be using the terms “mind” and “mental” here with no metaphysical import. Thus
I understand “mental” to be on par with “chemical,” “optical” and “electrical.”
New Horizons in the Study of Language and Mind, 2000
Introduction
As I have noted, Chomsky has at several points looked outside linguistics for
frames in which to legitimate his work in the study of language. For example,
Chomsky’s first appeals to the language of philosophy (specifically to symbolic logic) in
the fifties were largely designed to offer an accepted set of methods to his studies of
syntax; Chomsky’s original appeals to philosophy were attempts to capture a supposedly
rigorous formal metadiscourse to ground his methods for studying human language. This
technique of building authority in certain domains by making appeals to others is, in fact,
a technique that Chomsky has used throughout his career. Indeed, starting with his
famous 1959 review of B.F. Skinner’s Verbal Behavior242— and more prominently after
his early sixties joint publications with Miller (e.g., 1963), Chomsky and his followers
One should note that Chomsky’s review was first published in the journal Language (i.e., for
an audience of linguists).
242
Oenbring / 236
have — at least implicitly — claimed the authority of the tradition of psychological
inquiry. For example, in 1968’s Language and Mind, what would prove to be his most
influential book written for a general academic audience, Chomsky famously suggested
that linguistics should be viewed as a “branch of cognitive psychology” (76). (However,
unlike his early use of formal logic, Chomsky’s later discovery of psychology has always
been more of a sacredly-guarded point of identity than a genuine appropriation of the
methods of a different field; despite generative grammarians’ claims that their field is a
branch of cognitive psychology, the methods of psychology proper have always had little
to no genuine effect on the actual work of generative grammarians. Nonetheless,
deference to the psychological [read: biological] implications of their findings permeates
both the technical discourse of generative grammarians and broader discourse
surrounding generative grammar; Chomsky has been largely successful in promoting this
identity for generative grammar and linguistics as a whole.)243
By identifying his work with both the field of psychology and the field of
linguistics, Chomsky has, in a way, been able to make his work beyond the fray in a way
in both fields; just as Chomsky can wow budding linguists with the psychological /
biological claims of his work, he can silence the psychologist with his inaccessible
technical analyses of language (after all, he is a linguist). The same impossibility for
refutation is true for Chomsky’s interventions in philosophical discourse as well;
philosophers can’t refute him because he’s a linguist, and linguists can’t refute him
243
Nevertheless, Chomsky has at several points in his career, but mostly commonly in the late
sixties and early seventies, expressed thinly-veiled contempt for the discipline of psychology,
particularly its behaviorist variant, setting up Skinner and behaviorism as bogeymen (see, for
example, “Psychology and Ideology.”)
Oenbring / 237
because he’s a philosopher. Indeed, using authority given to him by his inquiries into
certain domains in order to support his claims in other domains is a technique that
Chomsky has used throughout his career; it is a rhetorical strategy he has used to build
his authority in multiple areas, including: linguistics, philosophy, broad academic
discourse, and even political discourse.
As I have noted, Chomsky has never been satisfied merely being the most
influential living scholar of human language within the field of linguistics. Just as
Chomsky has made appeals outside the study of language to build his authority within the
field of linguistics, he has also in publications aimed outside the field of linguistics used
his authority as a famous linguist to authorize his statements in these neighboring fields.
However, like any broadly successful academic rhetor, Chomsky has had to make his
work accord with needs of these broader communities when presenting his technical
work to them. In engaging in these reformulations, Chomsky has taken liberties with
claims made in his technical scholarship. The specific rhetorical strategies that Chomsky
has used in order to meet with the needs of (and manage the concerns of) these various
communities is the primary focus of this chapter.244
244
Of course, a more sympathetic account might suggest that Chomsky attempts to spread his
message to broader academic audiences and popular audiences out of his love for humanity.
Barksy, for example, suggests in his hagiographic The Chomsky Effect that:
his teaching and lecturing styles reflect [his] views as well, something that is evident
from his paying attention to and taking seriously the views of all persons. Given this
stance, the idea of a ‘popularizer’ does not refer to the messenger who comes down from
the mount to explain to the ignorant masses the meanings of his (or others’) great
teachings; instead, he speaks to others on the basis of his direct experience with the
matters at hand and he seeks out the opinions of those with whom he is engaged. (40)
While Barsky is correct to suggest that Chomsky can, in person, seem disarmingly modest, his
assessment that Chomsky produces his claims largely out of dialogue with others (i.e., that “he
seeks out the opinions of those with whom he is engaged”) clearly is an overstatement.
Oenbring / 238
Specifically, in this chapter I analyze the techniques that Chomsky himself has
used in order reframe his technical scholarship in order to present it to a general academic
audience. In order to do this, I juxtapose and analyze his technical texts in comparison to
his set of texts aimed at a general academic audience (what I call in this chapter his
historical/philosophical genre). Later on in this chapter, I trace — and explain the
rhetorical purpose of — a specific dramatic change in Chomsky’s historical/philosophical
texts over the past decades: Chomsky has gone from associating generative grammar with
dualist philosophers like Descartes and Plato, as he did from the sixties through the
eighties, to, in the last decade, associating his work with a monist (i.e., a more traditional
scientific) perspective.
At the end of this chapter, I present the findings of a short corpus study presenting
some quantitative empirical measures of three corpora of Chomsky’s texts that I have
developed. The three genres represented with their own corpus are: Chomsky’s technical
texts, his historical/philosophical texts, and his political texts. I present these measures in
order to flesh out my analyses of the differing styles of Chomsky’s different genres.
While corpus studies do have their own limitations, including being limited by the
practitioners of the studies’ choices for what to include in the corpora, oftentimes
producing more banal than interesting findings, I have included the corpus study in the
interest of including more empirically scrupulous methods than I do other places in this
study. The textual features that I search the corpora for include statistics such as average
sentence length, keywords (common words in one corpus in comparison to another), and
3-grams (reoccurring strings of three words).
Oenbring / 239
Genre vs. Register
As I have previously argued, to suggest that Chomsky has several genres
available in his repertoire is not merely to suggest that he has had several unique topics of
which he has been concerned about across his career (i.e., language and politics) nor is it
merely to throw a label on bodies of text. Indeed, close attention to Chomsky’s body of
work suggests that he enacts diverse rhetorical strategies when writing for different
audiences, a habit that he has maintained for decades. Nevertheless, using the term genre
to refer to the publications of a particular rhetor has two broad problems. First of all, the
very notion of genre as it is used by contemporary rhetoricians is deeply tied to language
as a social fact: it describes habituated patterns of action of significantly sized groups of
people, not individuals. Second of all, the concept of genre necessarily draws clean
divides between groups of texts, and is seemingly unable to account for rhetors’ ability to
strategically build hybrid or mixed-genre texts. As Derrida (1980), always a wicked
ironist, reminds us, “genres are not to be mixed.”
A related notion to the concept of genre at use among contemporary rhetoricians
and functional linguists that can seemingly solve the latter but not the former of these
problems is the notion of register, what Halliday (1994 [2004]), defines as “the patterns
of instantiation of the overall system associated with a given type of context” (27). This
definition is quite vague, but is potentially useful to us in its nonspecific nature. Basically
register refers to the stylistic features of given community or context of writing and
speaking (for example, we can refer to technical or scientific registers). The difference
between register and genre is that genre, unlike register must be tied to a particular group
Oenbring / 240
of texts or speech patterns. For example, the scientific research article and the review
article are distinct genres, but they both deploy or provide instantiations of a scientific
register.
While I use the term genre to refer to Chomsky’s separate bodies of work, I
recognize that a more appropriate term may be register. First of all, the texts that I place
under the same genre are by no means homogenous. For example, in this study I place
both of Chomsky’s recent texts New Horizons in the Study of Language and Mind (2000)
and On Nature and Language (2002) within what I call Chomsky’s
historical/philosophical genre despite the fact that the two texts do not have exactly the
same audience.245 Nevertheless, these texts use very similar techniques of exposition (in
this case, positioning the project of generative grammar against several major figures in
early modern philosophy); I believe that there are convincing reasons to theorize these
texts as members of the same genre. Moreover, Chomsky routinely uses language from
one particular genre in others. For example, the early world creation pages of technical
texts such as Aspects and Current Issues have a fair portion of historical/philosophical
argumentation. Although both Aspects and Current Issues can safely be placed in the
technical genre, both have some historical/philosophical argumentation; if we were
focusing on the notion of register in this study, we could easily take note of the fact that
both Aspects and Current Issues at points use a historical/philosophical register — in
addition to a technical register. Nonetheless, in the interests of terminological continuity
245
Whereas On Nature and Language is the product of a series of public lectures by Chomsky
and is directed at a broad academic audience, New Horizons in the Study of Language and Mind
is a more direct intervention in philosophical conversations.
Oenbring / 241
between this chapter and the previous chapter, I have decided to stick mostly with the
term genre.
Domains of Authority and Textual Form
An interesting example of Chomsky using the conventions and claims of widely
different domains in support of the program of generative grammar is his work in the late
1960s to whip up a broad panic about behaviorist psychology, a technique that he used, in
part, to further marginalize the post-Bloomfieldian linguists. This case is particularly
interesting, in that it manifested itself in across Chomsky’s diverse body of public
writing, showing up in different forms in all of his genres, including: his technical texts,
his texts aimed a general academic audience, and even in his political texts. Chomsky
uses the conventions of these disparate domains of discourse — and the prerogatives
afforded rhetors in these varying domains of discourse — all in support of the project of
generative grammar.246
As I have previously suggested, one of Chomsky’s favorite central themes when
he tells the history of linguistics is the idea that generative theories led to a profound
epistemological break with previous post-Bloomfieldian scholarship. Accordingly,
throughout the sixties, Chomsky often created straw man of the post-Bloomfiedians,
lumping them together as a single group tainted by a behaviorist outlook — a group that
Moreover, the cross-generic nature of Chomsky’s campaign against behaviorism in the late
sixties is especially interesting in that Chomsky generally suggests that there are no compelling
similarities between his politics and his linguistics.
246
Oenbring / 242
demonstrated an obsession with data collection at the expense of rich universals.247 In the
technical literature, Chomsky’s attacks against the post-Bloomfieldians are largely
limited to suggesting that their work is uninspired and unenlightening; the work of
structuralist linguists is descriptive, not positing rich universals. The following passage
comes from the early, world creation pages of Aspects:
A fully adequate grammar must assign to each of an infinite range of sentences a
structural description indicating how this sentence is understood by the ideal
speaker-hear. This is the traditional problem of descriptive linguistics, and
traditional grammars give a wealth of information concerning structural
descriptions of sentences. However, valuable as they obviously are, traditional
grammars are deficient in that they leave unexpressed many of the basic
regularities of the language with which they are concerned. This fact is particular
clear on the level of syntax, where no traditional or structuralist grammar goes
beyond classification of particular examples to the stage of formulation of
generative rule on any significant scale. (4-5)
This quote is interesting in that Chomsky compares the work of the post-Bloomfieldians
with traditional pedagogical and prescriptive grammar in order to suggest the banality of
the post-Bloomfieldians’ work; post-Bloomfieldian work is taxonomic, not explanatory.
247
While Chomsky construed the older generation of linguists as a single group, he, however,
used several different terms to refer to the post-Bloomfieldians, including: descriptive linguistics,
anti-mentalist linguistics, and structural linguistics (a term commonly used to in the history of
linguistics to refer to the post-Bloomfielians). (Of course, the terms that Chomsky uses to refer to
the post-Bloomfieldians in his various texts can be connected to the differing audiences and
differing rhetorical situations of Chomsky’s different texts.)
Oenbring / 243
However, in his major popular-audience-focused text of the late sixties, 1968’s
Language and Mind, Chomsky construes the post-Bloomfieldians as part of a broad
effort in what he calls “behavioral science” to control behavior:
Behavioral science has been much preoccupied with data and organization of
data, and it has even seen itself as a kind of technology of control of behavior.
Anti-mentalism in linguistics and in philosophy of language conforms to this shift
of orientation. As I mentioned in my first lecture, I think that one major indirect
contribution of modern structural linguistics results from its success in making
explicit the assumptions of an anti-mentalistic, thoroughly operational and
behaviorist approach to the phenomena of language. (58-59)
The dubious parallel Chomsky is trying to draw is this: that by deemphasizing the innate,
biological nature of language, post-Bloomfieldians were therefore exponents of radical
behaviorism (i.e., infinite plasticity of learning through stimuli and responses) and thus
are exponents of social engineering (i.e., Hockett = Skinner = McNamara). Indeed, it is
important to remember that Language and Mind began as a series of lectures delivered on
the campus of UC Berkeley when Chomsky was a visiting faculty there in 1967.
Chomsky uses the occasion of addressing a general academic audience, and his appeal as
a growing figure in the anti-Vietnam movement, to engage in such a direct attack. Such
an explicit, and somewhat absurd, attack as we see here could not have succeeded (or
likely even be publishable) in technical scholarship aimed at other linguists.
Indeed, in his attacks on oppressive systems of power in his political writings,
Chomsky routinely suggested that academics themselves have been co-opted by the
Oenbring / 244
systems of power that it is their duty to critique. In his political writings of the late
sixties Chomsky ramped up the level of his attack on ‘behavioral scientists’, and by
extension the post-Bloomfieldians. Chomsky suggests, for example, in “Objectivity and
Liberal Scholarship,” an essay also published in 1968 that:
In much the same way, behavioral scientists who believe themselves to be in
possession of certain techniques of control and manipulation will tend to search
for problems to which their knowledge and skills might be relevant, defining
these as the “important problems”; and it will come as no surprise that they
occasionally express their contempt for “flimsy premises involving world public
opinion” that restrict the application of these skills. Thus among engineers, there
are the “weapons cultists” who construct their bombs and among the behavioral
scientists, we find the technicians who design and carry out “experiments with
population resources control methods” in Vietnam. (25)248
As this quote clearly suggests, Chomsky connects the impulses behind what he calls
behavioral science with attempts to pacify the rural population of Vietnam, surely a
248
In this passage Chomsky incorporates quotes from other sources in his own quirky way, a way
that he does throughout his political writings. At the beginning of this passage he is continuing
his use of a quote from US Senator Joseph Clark of Pennsylvannia, a relatively liberal midcentury senator. The quote comes originally from a congressional hearing, and Senator Clark is
critiquing the comments of the director of Los Alamos Laboratories Weapons division. Chomsky
does a decent job of framing the quote and introducing this important background information.
However, at the end of this passage, Chomsky suddenly changes his source without proper
introduction. Rather than quoting a liberal senator, he is at the end quoting the recent doctoral
dissertation of William Nighswonger, one of these “behavorial scientists” whose dissertation,
supported by the Pentagon, offered strategies for pacifying rural areas in Vietnam. Indeed,
throughout his political writings we see Chomsky quoting other sources extensively, but
oftentimes not properly introducing or paraphrasing these other sources; he lets the other voices
that he introduces stand on their own. The attitude that Chomsky is demonstrating by introducing
sources in this manner: information that is on the public record is accessible to anyone; anyone
can and should be able to see through the lies.
Oenbring / 245
highly emotive connection at that time. Writing for a broad audience, Chomsky can
collapse all empirically-focused approaches to the study of man, whether funded by the
Pentagon or not, into a single, vilified category: behavioral science.249
As this example shows, Chomsky has a tendency to be wily in the use of the
prerogatives afforded rhetors in different domains of discourse to spread claims in others.
Specifically, in this case he associates the post-Bloomfieldians with a dangerous political
ideology, an ideology that many of the older generation of linguists were, no doubt,
completely against. Nonetheless, Chomsky has used techniques like this throughout his
career.
249
The above passage is particularly interesting as Chomsky has in more recent decades
positioned himself as a defender of the enlightenment. Indeed, Chomsky issued several
statements against cultural studies of science during the so-called ‘science wars’ of the 1990s.
Speaking of feminist and cultural studies critiques of “white male science,” Chomsky suggests in
a short 1995 essay “Rationality/Science” that:
in fact, the entire idea of “white male science” reminds me, I'm afraid, of “Jewish
physics.” Perhaps it is another inadequacy of mine, but when I read a scientific paper, I
can't tell whether the author is white or is male. The same is true of discussion of work in
class, the office, or somewhere else. I rather doubt that the non-white, non-male students,
friends, and colleagues with whom I work would be much impressed with the doctrine
that their thinking and understanding differ from “white male science” because of their
“culture or gender and race.” I suspect that “surprise” would not be quite the proper word
for their reaction
All of this suggests that Chomsky has, over his career, strategically positioned himself by turns
against and with the project of building scientific knowledge about human beings in support of
the project of generative grammar; that he now defends science against cultural studies critiques
and other incursions by what he frames as charlatan postmodernists is surprising seeing that he
took such a bold posture of dissidence in regard to science earlier in his career.
Oenbring / 246
Chomsky’s Technical Genre
Pictorial Representation of Word Frequencies for Technical Corpus
Figure 1
As I have noted, many of Chomsky’s most important publications in syntactic
theory have been quite technical and rather inaccessible. Many of these highly technical
texts are, interestingly, some of Chomsky’s most famous and most cited texts among
generative grammarians (see, for example, my citation study of Linguistic Inquiry).250
Indeed, Chomsky’s technical texts have become, by and large, more inaccessible over
time; as generative grammar’s place within the discipline of linguistics has become more
250
While certain texts are certainly more prototypical members of the genre than others, we can
place the following publications, many of them seminal, into the category of the technical genre:
Syntactic Structures (1957); Current Issues in Linguistics Theory/”Logical Basis” (1964);
Aspects of the Theory of Syntax (1965); The Sound Pattern of English (1968); “Remarks on
Nominalization” (1970); Studies on Semantics in Generative Grammar (1972); “Conditions on
Transformations” (1973); “Conditions on Rules of Grammar” (1976); “Filters and Control”
(1977) (with Lasnik); "On wh-movement" (1977); "On binding" (1980); Lectures on Government
and Binding (1981); Barriers (1986); The Minimalist Program (1995) (including 1993 w/
Lasnik); "Minimalist Inquiries: The Framework" (2000); "Derivations by Phase" (2001); a 2005
article in Linguistic Inquiry “Three Factors in Language Design”; and, most recently, Chomsky’s
unpublished 2006 manuscript “Approaching UG from Below.”
Oenbring / 247
established, Chomsky has had to do less and less to make his claims clear to outsiders.251
In fact, one might say that at times Chomsky’s writing smacks more of the ponderous
prose of a low-level engineer than a master rhetor.252 (Of course, this may be to some
degree a deliberate rhetorical choice; Chomsky uses — and, indeed, inspires other
generative grammarians to also use — an inaccessible and ‘dry’ style in order to promote
the scientific ethos of generative accounts.)
Scientific and technical writing is usually thought to be totally lacking in artifice;
generally, scientific and technical prose is assumed to be little more than a container, not
constraining knowledge in any way. While the issue of whether the findings of the hard
sciences are constrained or affected in a substantive way by the language used in that
inquiry is still under debate, what is not up for debate is whether it is in the best interest
of softer or would-be sciences (like linguistics) to appropriate the prestige of harder
sciences by putting on the trappings of those harder sciences, including their writing
styles. This is a technique that generative grammarians, following Chomsky, have used
with great success.
Nevertheless, the fact that many of Chomsky’s most technical texts are also some
of his most famous and most cited would, at first, seem to directly contradict a commonly
made claim by rhetoricians of science: that we can account for a text’s success (or lack
thereof) by examining its style and/or its packaging (see, for example, McCloskey’s The
Rhetoric of Economics and/or Gross’ The Rhetoric of Science). That is to say, if
252
In fact, there are multiple websites using bots of varying quality that produce randomlygenerated text mimicking Chomsky’s technical prose.
Oenbring / 248
Chomsky’s most successful texts are also some of his most inaccessible, then it would
appear that what other scholars appreciated about the texts were the texts’ ideas and
propositions — not the author’s style.
Recognizing that some of Chomsky’s most influential texts have also been some
of his most technical does not, however, require a retreat to the traditionalist position: that
rhetoric has little to no effect on scholarly discourse. Indeed, this seeming problem
disappears when we consider that the audience of these technical texts is not a general
academic audience. That is to say, technical texts such as Lectures on Government and
Binding and The Minimalist Program have become famous because they have formed the
core of the intra-paradigm methodological revolutions that Chomsky has sponsored over
the years — revolutions that succeed in part because they were articulated in language
inaccessible to broader audiences. Rather, these books succeeded in large part because
they have promoted technical discourses that have budded off into distinct intellectual
communities. Whether these successful texts seem technical and unwelcoming to nonspecialists does not matter. (What I am describing here is somewhat analogous to
Aristotle’s divide in On Rhetoric between konoi topoi [starting points for arguments in all
domains of discourse (e.g., including legal and political settings)] and idia topoi [domain
or discipline-specific argument starting points].)
Chomsky’s use of technical formalisms has, since the fifties, played an important
role in setting up boundaries for the communities of generative grammarians (see, for
example, Chomsky’s earliest publications like “Logical Syntax and Semantics”). As I
have noted, in the early days, by using logical syntax to study human language, Chomsky
Oenbring / 249
was promoting methods both inaccessible to contemporary linguists (except through own
his work) and also outside the concerns of logicians; by using a set of methods and
technical discourse of one field on the research object of another field, Chomsky was
creating his own unique discipline of inquiry. In a way, this is a trick that Chomsky has
repeated numerous times. Indeed, over the history of generative grammar, Chomsky has
rearticulated the guiding methods of the discipline, but has done so in texts largely
inaccessible to the broader intellectual community — and increasingly inaccessible to
generative grammarians themselves. Indeed, to move the identity of the field of
generative grammar and lead the field through his serial revolutions of identity, what has
been necessary for Chomsky has been to articulate a set of methods, methods that,
although not truly novel, appear to be clearly distinct from governing practices. This
leads groups to bud off from the dominant intellectual community, with those new groups
developing institutional critical mass. The shifting sets of inaccessible (and somewhat
incommensurable) technical discourses that Chomsky has sponsored have each played an
important role in constituting these intellectual communities. It is this technical discourse,
broadly defined, of generative grammarians, inspired by and sprouted from Chomsky’s
work — and how this discourse serves to organize and isolate the community of
generative grammarians — that is the object of the remainder of this section.
No matter how inaccessible and formal Chomsky’s prose gets later in the work,
almost all of Chomsky’s technical texts have alluring world creation appeals at a
prominent place toward the beginning of the text; Chomsky uses his alluring terminology
Oenbring / 250
to bring the reader into a world where knowledge must play by the rules he presents. For
example, Chomsky’s 1980 article in Linguistic Inquiry “On Binding” begins:
The earliest work in transformational generative grammar aimed to develop a
concept of “grammatical transformation” rich enough to overcome, in a unified
way, a variety of problems that arose in the attempt to develop a satisfactory
theory of sentence structure and an associated account of meaning and use for
natural language. While the goal, from the outset, was what has sometimes been
called “explanatory adequacy”, the devices proposed were of so rich and varied a
nature as to leave this goal fairly inaccessible. Since that time, research has
advanced both in range and in depth. Many new phenomena have been studied,
and there as been some progress, I believe, towards a more principled theory of
grammar with far more restrictive devices and some abstract principles (1)
Chomsky begins the piece by presenting a narrative overviewing the history of generative
grammar, a narrative set up to quickly bring the reader to the important distinctive
concerns of Chomsky’s then contemporary approach (recall that one of Chomsky’s
biggest concerns of later EST was moving toward more abstract rules, and to
deemphasize potential for falsification as a criterion). During the narrative, Chomsky
draws upon his distinctive terminology / points of identity such as grammatical
transformation, explanatory adequacy, and even the notion of principled explanation to
Oenbring / 251
set up the rules of play for the coming text in a manner that serves his contemporary
concerns.253
After these alluring and welcoming world creation appeals, Chomsky’s technical
texts inevitably sponsor a set of technical machinery for describing human syntax.
Chomsky does this by either tinkering with or renaming important elements of the
technical apparatus used by generative grammarians. For example, well within Aspects,
Chomsky introduces a system of rules, represented in part here:
(i)
S → NP^Predicate-Phrase
(ii)
Predicate-Phrase → Aux^VP (Place) (Time) …
(v)
Prep-Phrase → Direction, Duration, Place, Frequency, etc.
(vi)
V → CS (Aspects 107)
In effect, what Chomsky is presenting is a toolkit for would-be generative linguists to
manipulate. By using Chomsky’s toolkit in future research, other linguists necessarily
make their work beholden to Chomsky. Indeed, by using technical apparatus sponsored
by Chomsky, later generative grammarians have, in effect, made their work only
accessible to a distinct intellectual community. What’s more, by sponsoring or renaming
terminology in each publication, Chomsky creates the appearance of progress in the
field.254
However, in comparison to the historical/philosophical texts Chomsky’s available repertoire of
introductory narratives is somewhat limited in the technical texts. This is due to the fact that
Chomsky’s audience is more familiar with the story of generative grammar; he is limited in the
tales he can spin.
254
As I have noted, despite the fact that deep structure and surface structure have not been a part
of the formal models of generative grammar for decades, an analogous divide between a level or
representation relating to meaning and a level relating sound has played an important role in
every subsequent program that Chomsky has sponsored.
253
Oenbring / 252
Although the toolkit from Aspects presented in part above may look inaccessible
to those not familiar with Chomsky’s technical prose, the above language is not nearly as
theory-internal and abstruse as some of Chomsky’s more recent technical works,
particularly those under the Minimalist Program. The following passage from Chomsky’s
2000 article “Minimalist Inquiries: The Framework” is typical of his recent, highly
technical prose: “Pure Merge is Merge that is not part of Move. The relevant properties
of Tβ have to do with Case/agreement and the EPP. In (5bii), if EA does not raise, [Spec,
Tβ] is introduced by pure Merge to satisfy the EPP. The case of H = nondefective T is
omitted in (5b): if (5bi) holds for C, it holds for (nondefective) T selected by C” (103).
These three sentences are dominated by theory internal operations and concepts (e.g.,
Merge, Move, Spec), intialisms (EPP, EA), and alphanumeric expressions representing
formal expressions (5b, 5bii). Moreover, Chomsky peppers his technical prose with
numerous Greek letters, a technique borrowed by other generative grammarians, no doubt
in part to build the mathematical (read: scientific) appeal of generative grammar.255
Nonetheless, when confronted with such prose, as readers we usually have the impression
that there is profound insight or truth being presented that we, unfortunately, are not able
to understand.
255
The fact that generative grammar has its own technical vocabulary and apparatus largely
inaccessible to non-specialists is not, in and of itself, despite the cries of many non-Chomskyan
linguists, a point to criticize the generative grammar for; all academic fields develop their own
specialized vocabulary, their own argot. Like in many academic fields, generative grammarians
express a preference for explicit and formal definitions of terms even though those terms are used
in a broader sense in other fields and in popular discourses.
Oenbring / 253
Although there has always been an element of smoke and mirrors to Chomsky’s
formalisms in his technical writing, it is clear that Chomsky’s more recent uses of
formalism are more smoke and mirrors meant to build the scientific ethos than his
formalisms had been in the past; while Chomsky’s use of formalism has always been part
a genuine desire to express syntactic strings and claims about syntactic strings in a
rigorous way and part smoke and mirrors, it is clear that the obfuscatory element has
increased markedly in Chomsky’s recent work. (I develop this claim in the next chapter.)
Furthermore, Chomsky has become more willing in recent work to use his
authority to introduce technical elements to the model. For example, Chomsky
introduces elements to the model several times in 2000’s “Minimalist Inquiries” using
language similar to the following: “we assume, then, that a language L maps ([F], Lex) to
Exp. The natural simplification would be to reduce access to the domain ([F], Lex) of L.
… Keeping to narrow syntax, then, we may take CHL to be a mapping of Lex to the LF
representations of Exp” (100, italics added). Note Chomsky’s particular phraseology
here: we assume and we may take. While Chomsky uses we to occlude his own agency in
introducing this variable to the model, this is clearly a power play.
Similarly, Chomsky has a tendency to appropriate other competing notions and
technical discourse; Chomsky has a history of authorizing other methods and by bringing
those methods into the Theory, whether the original promoters of the original notions
want their ideas assimilated into generative theory or not. Consider the following short
passage from Chomsky’s 1981 technical text Lectures on Government and Binding:
Oenbring / 254
To relate these notions to the θ-criterion, let us extend the notion “θ-marking” in
the following way. We will say256 that α θ-marks the category β if α θ-marks the
position occupied by β or a trace of β. Note that α subcategorizes a position but θmarks both a position and a category. (34)
This short passage includes numerous theory-internal explicitly defined terms, including
θ-criterion, θ-marking, trace, position, and category. Specifically in this passage,
Chomsky is extending the formal definition of θ-marking. Although θ-roles, a.k.a. or
thematic or semantic roles (basically the specific meaning-roles that noun phrases play in
sentences), were developed by linguists such as Gruber, Halliday, and Chafe (the latter
two distinctly anti-generative in orientation), Chomsky brought semantic roles into the
fold under the Extended Standard theory and has given them a central place in the GB / P
and P framework; while semantic roles developed largely outside the generative
tradition, Chomsky appropriated and explicitly redefined them according to relationships
among elements in hierarchic syntactic trees. Indeed, Chomsky appropriated θ-roles, a
pet concept of anti-generative functionalist linguists, and made it part of the Theory
without so much as a by your leave. More crucially, Chomsky’s appropriation of
thematic roles served to assimilate Fillmore’s competing notion of case grammar within
generative theory; Chomsky co-opted Fillmore’s competing methods by making them
part of his own model.
Another element of Chomsky’s technical writing that deserves discussion is
Chomsky’s and his followers’ systematic in-group citation. In their technical works,
256
Note the phrasing: “We will say…”
Oenbring / 255
Chomsky and his followers establish the legitimacy of their concerns by noting that
similar ideas have been discussed in other studies. As I have noted, at the time of
Current Issues, there were few generative grammarians operating outside of Cambridge.
Nevertheless, Chomsky does much rhetorically in Current Issues to frame the generative
approach as a much more established tradition of scholarship than it was at 1964.
Chomsky, for example, suggests in footnote that:
The most accessible summary of formal properties of grammatical
transformations, from this point of view, is in Chomsky (1961a). For further
details, see Chomsky (1955, chapters 8, 9). The most extensive study of English
grammar within this framework is Lees (1960a). See the bibliography of the
second printing of (1962) of Chomsky (1957a) for references to much recent
work. In addition, cf. Schacter (1961, 1962), Postal (1962), Langendoen (1963b).
(Current Issues 13)
In this short footnote, Chomsky cites articles by one then current graduate student at MIT
(Lagendoen), one former graduate student (Lees), one colleague at MIT (Postal), and
himself a total of three times (including an unpublished manuscript257). While this
footnote nicely captures the knowledge building dynamics of a developing field, it also is
of course a slight of hand. The goal of this sleight of hand: to make the largely arbitrary
methodological preferences he and his followers have included in their lines of inquiry to
Indeed, the bibliography of Current Issues includes a total of three of Chomsky’s unpublished
works.
257
Oenbring / 256
appear as more than just arbitrary micro-methodological preferences, but to construe
them as the findings of an established tradition of inquiry.258
Chomksy’s Historical/Philosophical Genre
Pictorial Representation of Word Frequencies for Historical/Philosophical Corpus
Indeed, as Randy Harris notes in his analysis of Syntactic Structures, Chomsky’s work often
relies upon a maze of self-reference. Harris eloquently observes that:
Of the 74 specific citations in [Syntactic Structures], 31 are to Chomsky’s own work; 12
are to Logical Structure, with another 5 to “Transformational Analysis,” the Logical
Structures [sic] chapter that comprised his doctoral thesis. Much of this systematic selfcitation clearly has to do with the fact that he was carving out paths in an area which had
seen very few explorers before him. And he is clearly making the best with what little
inartistic authority he has to draw upon. But there is a certain lack of subtlety here. In a
monograph barely over a hundred pages, there is something excessive about reminding
the audience so recurrently that more rigorous treatments can be found elsewhere –
particularly when there are only seven items to distribute among the 31 citations, and
when the two most frequently cited documents (one of which contains the other) are both
unpublished. (“Argumentation” 121)
Harris is correct to note both Chomsky’s rhetorical achievement of “making the best with what
little inartistic authority he has to draw upon” (121), and Chomsky’s obvious sleight of hand in
his “reminding the audience so recurrently that more rigorous treatments can be found
elsewhere.” Nevertheless, reoccurring self-citation and systems of in-group citation have played
an important role in the development of generative grammar.
258
Oenbring / 257
Figure 2
Never content merely to be a successful linguist, Chomsky began expanding the
bounds of his empire beyond linguistics early on in his career. Indeed, due to
publications such as his review of Skinner and due to his reception by collaborators such
as Miller and Lenneberg, Chomsky was, by the mid-sixties, building a reputation in the
field of cognitive psychology.259 With his 1966 book Cartesian Linguists, Chomsky
began another tack for spreading his claims outside of linguistics proper: positioning the
project of generative in relation to the claims of the founding fathers of classical modern
philosophy and science (e.g.., Descartes, Hume, and Galileo) in order to present
generative grammar to a broader academic audience. Chomsky’s goal in positioning his
project against these classic philosophers and scientists in texts like Cartesian Linguistics
is, at least in historical perspective, clear: to use these well-known philosophers and
scientists as points of reference against which to build the identity of his own project (i.e.,
by claiming the throne of Descartes, as he does in the title of the book, he was claiming
the tradition of rationalism, a tradition that had long been recognized as distinct from
empiricism,260 a guiding idea of the post-Bloomfieldian linguists). These appeals to
famous philosophers have worked in part due the fact that the language of philosophy
serves, in a very real way, as a lingua franca of the academy. Indeed, it is clear that by
invoking these philosophers, Chomsky was opening the door for his broader reception in
other fields; he was attempting to popularize his ideas.
See for example the prominent place given to Chomsky’s work in Lenneberg’s edited volume
Biological Foundations of Language.
260
This is not, however, to suggest that the post-Bloomfieldians took Locke, Hume, and Berkeley
as patron philosophers.
259
Oenbring / 258
At first glance though, Cartesian Linguistics, like several of Chomsky’s texts in
what I refer to as his historical/philosophical genre, may not appear much like
popularization — or even particularly welcoming. Also, the book may appear at first less
an attempt to tell the story of generative grammar to an audience of non-linguists than a
straightforward attempt to tell a piece of intellectual history; there is very little direct I am
explaining to you why my version of linguistics is relevant in Cartesian Linguistics.
Nonetheless, Chomsky reduplicated the governing appeals of Cartesian Linguistics in his
successful 1968 book Language and Mind, a book more clearly designed as
popularization (a book since 2006 in its third edition). Despite the fact that these texts
are rarely cited by generative grammarians, Cartesian Linguistics and Language and
Mind are, for certain two of Chomsky’s highest profile texts among non-linguists.261
While Chomsky’s historiography in Cartesian Linguistics and Language and
Mind has always been suspect to a large number of scholars, if increasing the profile of
the author is a proper measure of success for academic publications, both books have
been triumphs. Following in suit, Chomsky has, over the years, repeated the governing
stylistic modes of these two books in numerous publications, including: Problems of
Knowledge and Freedom (1971), a volume devoted partially to his political work;
Reflections on Language (1975), a more technical intervention in philosophical
discussion; Rules and Representations (1980); Knowledge of Language (1986), a book
261
Indeed, a search of the Science Citation Index suggests, for example, that after Aspects and
SPE, Cartesian Linguistics and Language and Mind were Chomsky’s most-cited texts of the
1960s, each leading to a handful of translations, with the former producing forty documented
reviews and the latter (along with its second edition) leading to at least fourteen reviews (see,
Koerner and Tajima).
Oenbring / 259
partially written in the historical/philosophical register and partially in the technical
register262; Language and Problems of Knowledge (1988); Language and Thought
(1993); The Architecture of Language (2000); New Horizons in the Study of Language
and Mind (2000); and, most recently, On Nature and Language (2002). The audiences of
these historical/philosophical texts have over the years remained mostly non-linguists.
Indeed, a search of the Science Citation Index for Chomsky’s 2000 volume New
Horizons in the Study of Language and Mind, suggests that less than 1/6th of the total
number of citations of the text have taken place in traditional linguistics journals, with the
large majority occurring in journals with a focus on philosophy. 263
In the remainder of this section, I attempt to trace the important rhetorical and
expository features of Chomsky’s historical/philosophical texts. This analysis leads into
262
Indeed, as my citation count in Linguistic Inquiry demonstrates, Knowledge of Language is
Chomsky’s only historical/philosophical text that has developed an extensive citation history in
the technical scholarship. This is due, no doubt, to Chomsky’s important suggestions for the GB/
P and P model made in the latter half of the book, and due to the fact that it is the first volume
where Chomsky expresses his (in)famous ideas regarding evolution.
263
Following a tradition originated with Language and Mind, many of Chomsky’s
historical/philosophical texts began their lives as public lectures. Interestingly enough, however,
the historical/philosophical expository content of Chomsky’s most recent books based on public
lectures has, however, dropped off. Indeed, Language and Thought (1993) includes minimal
historical/philosophical exposition, and The Architecture of Language (2000) contains even less.
The reasons for this decline in historical/philosophical content are simple if one considers that
coming up with new historical/philosophical arguments must be laborious task; as Chomsky’s
fame — and demand for his books — have increased, suddenly his work needs to meet lower and
lower standards of quality to be publishable. That is to say, Chomsky no longer necessarily needs
to come up with a polished set of new historical/philosophical arguments to publish books. How
else can one human write over 100 books in a lifetime? (Indeed, as Chomsky’s international fame
has increased, publishers have become more willing to put out less polished versions of
Chomsky’s public lectures. The blame can also be put on Chomsky as well: as demand for
Chomsky’s work has increased, he has been willing to let increasingly less polished material go
to print. This waning of quality as Chomsky’s fame has spread is especially prominent in
Chomsky’s most recent political volumes, which often are little more than the transcripts of
informal interviews with interlocutors or the largely unedited transcripts of public lectures.)
Oenbring / 260
an extensive discussion of how Chomsky has changed the claims of
historical/philosophical texts over the decades. As I note, although the figures against
which Chomsky has positioned generative grammar have changed over the years, the
basic tactic has remained the same (with the strategic nature of these appeals becoming
clearer over time). That is to say, the historical/philosophical expository techniques of
Cartesian Linguistics and Language and Mind continue to the present.
Indeed, Chomsky begins one of his public lectures reprinted in 2002’s On Nature
and Language by invoking the authority of Galileo as historical precursor for the notion
of the creative aspect of language use. Specifically, Chomsky states that:
It would only be appropriate to begin with some of the thoughts of the master,
who does not disappoint us, even though the topics I want to discuss are remote
from his primary concerns. Galileo may have been the first to recognize clearly
the significance of the core property of human language, and one of its most
distinctive properties: the use of finite means to express an unlimited array of
thoughts. (On Nature and Language 45)
As this quote suggests, Chomsky aligns his project with an observation (apparently)
made by Galileo, one of the founding fathers of modern science. The ultimate effect of
such appeals: to make his work appear to be in dialogue with – and ultimately part of the
canon of the masters.
While an important feature of Chomsky’s technical texts are attempts to build the
appearance of progression in the model (something largely achieved by Chomsky’s
updates of terminology), the historical/philosophical texts consistently look backward to
Oenbring / 261
such classic philosophers and scientists. The reason for this divide seems clear: appeals
to the authority of tradition (i.e., appeals to the classics) bear more weight with nonspecialist audiences than with specialist audiences. To use Aristotle’s terms, appeals to
the classics are konoi, not idia, topoi to Chomsky. 264
Unlike in his technical publications, Chomsky cannot assume the readers of the
historical/philosophical texts to have an extensive knowledge of the disciplinary history
of the field. Accordingly, when explaining the methods of generative grammar in the
historical/philosophical texts, Chomsky — even in his more recent texts — starts at the
beginning. What’s more, as he is given the prerogative to — in a very real way — create
the field of linguistics in each text for his audience of non-linguists, Chomsky takes
liberties with the ways that he tells the story of generative grammar. Indeed, in historical
perspective, the stories that he tells have changed remarkably over time, with new stories
reenergizing the claims of generative grammar. The effect of these shifts has been to
reinvigorate the claims and to build the revolutionary ethos of the field.
Enforcing his authority as a ‘revolutionary’ linguist, the historical/philosophical
texts are laden with visionary language. Chomsky, for example, claims early in his
lecture reproduced in 1993’s Language and Thought that:
Traditional questions are no longer forgotten or dismissed as absurd and
senseless, as they were during the heyday of “behavioral science” and the various
brands of structuralism. They have been reopened and in some cases seriously
264
Although less prominent in his technical works than his historical/philosophical works, such
appeals to classic figures have, nevertheless, played important roles in Chomsky’s texts aimed at
the community of linguists – particularly in the world creation sections of the books. This is
especially the case in important mid-sixties works like Current Issues and Aspects.
Oenbring / 262
investigated. New questions are being posed that could not have been imagined a
few years ago, and they seem to be the right ones, opening the way to new
understanding, and unsuspected problems. (16)
Reiterating here his rhetorically-created category of “behavioral science” (notice
Chomsky’s own scare quotes), Chomsky paints in broad strokes regarding broad shifts in
the orientation and goal of linguistic theory for an audience of non-linguists. In the
historical/philosophical texts, Chomsky makes sure to keep things grand and, usually,
vague.
Accordingly, the reader of the historical/philosophical texts gets the sense that
Chomsky is reporting back from the field, rather than rhetorically reinforcing and
recreating the commitments of the field for an audience of non-linguists. (After all, he’s
the famous linguist.) Early on in Language and Problems of Knowledge, for example,
Chomsky reminds the reader that what “I will not try to give an exposition of the current
state of understanding of language; that would be far too large a task to undertake in the
time available” (1). Furthermore, Chomsky has taken to using examples from the local
language in order to explain the model he is presenting to the audience. Language and
Problems, a book based on series of lectures given in Nicaragua in 1986, for example,
gives numerous examples in Spanish. The ultimate effect for the public audience/reader
of the text is to give the feeling that Chomsky has all the facts under control and is merely
giving an example to the public in their local language out of his benevolence.
Although the rhetorical maneuvers in the historical/philosophical texts are clear,
Chomsky claims these texts be largely straightforward popularizations (i.e., simplifying
Oenbring / 263
the message in order to explain the field to non-specialists). Indeed, while explaining the
methods of generative grammarians to an audience of non-specialists is, for certain, one
of the primary goals of these historical/philosophical texts, Chomsky’s works in this
genre actually offer very little in the way of direct explanation of specific trends and
findings in current generative scholarship. Instead, the goal of these texts appears to be
undergirding the foundations of generative grammar, renewing the impetus behind the
field for a general academic audience.
As in many linguistics textbooks (books which themselves are mostly like taking
their cues from Chomsky), one of the important goals of the historical/philosophical texts
is to surround the reader with Chomsky’s definitive terminology (what I have called in
this study his points of identity). Knowledge of Language, for example, introduces the
reader to all of the following distinctly Chomskyan notions: universal grammar,
language faculty, Plato’s problem, Orwell’s problem, I-language, E-language (the last
four being terms Chomsky introduces with the text). The ultimate effect of the initiate to
linguistics being surrounded in these Chomskyan god-terms is to make their knowledge
of the field beholden to Chomsky’s person. However, unlike linguistics textbook,
Chomsky does not tie the terminology he presents to his own person — to do so would be
to violate the (apparent) scientific values of modesty and objectivity.
Oenbring / 264
Arguing the Perfectly-Formed Mind: Chomsky’s Monism and Dualism as
Foundational Rhetorics
As I have suggested in this study, one of the primary reasons for the success of
Chomksy’s reinvention of generative grammar in each of its various forms has been his
ability to articulate a new revolutionary identity for the program of generative grammar
along with his unveiling of a new set of methodological commitments and assumptions
for the field. That is to say, Chomsky has actively worked to construct a series of
conceptual revolutions coinciding with his unveiling of a new orientation for generative
theorizing. The various changes in the model of generative grammar that Chomsky has
promoted over the years have been more changes in the rhetorical framework used to
legitimate the program to the linguistic and broader academic community than
substantive changes in core methodological commitments.
Among the differing rhetorical frameworks that Chomsky has used in order to
legitimate the program of generative grammar as scientific, one of the most interesting
points of tension is the dynamic between his monist and dualist rhetorics. As I have
suggested, much of the work of framing the various programs of generative grammar as
each uniquely revolutionary and scientific has been done by the texts of what I have
called Chomksy’s historical/philosophical genre — texts where he positions the project
of generative grammar against the methods of several of the most important scientists and
philosophers in history. The philosophers and scientists that Chomsky positions himself
in relation to in these texts have espoused various dualist (the proposition that there exists
Oenbring / 265
a mind/spirit distinct from the material body and/or perfect conceptual structures in mind)
and monist (espousing only a material body) (meta)physical systems.
For example, in his popularly-focused arguments in support of the Aspects
model,265 the time of the ascent of generative grammar, Chomsky more or less directly
connected his view of the mind to Descartes, a philosopher/scientist whose view of the
mind is, for certain, deeply entwined with his religious orientation and physiological
dualism. While Chomsky has never explicitly promoted dualism, the belief that there
exists a mind/spirit that is distinct from the purely material body, the methodology of
generative grammar as a whole is deeply entwined with the notion that there exist innate,
seemingly transcendent, formal structures in the brain — structures that cannot, at least
with our current limited understanding of the physiology of the mind, be decomposed
into component parts.
Chomsky, for example, argues in his 1986 university public lecture text Language
and Problems of Knowledge that “the discoveries of the linguist-psychologist set the state
for further inquiry into brain mechanisms, inquiry that must proceed blindly, without
knowing what it is looking for, in the absence of such understanding, expressed at an
abstract level” (7). Indeed, generative grammar, like many would-be cognitive sciences,
posits the existence of formal structures in the mind that we have no direct physiological
evidence for. As such, the formal structures promoted by the work of generative
grammarians are reminiscent of the perfect ideas in the mind promoted in the work of
Descartes (see, for example, Meditations on First Philosophy and Discourse on Method).
265
See, for example, Chomsky’s 1971 debate with Foucault (The Chomsky-Foucault Debate).
Oenbring / 266
What’s more, to any biologist or psychologist working with real physiological evidence
generative grammar may seem, due to its very methods, vaguely dualist and mystical. 266
Nevertheless, Chomsky’s work in the sixties and seventies to connect his own
view of the mind with that of Descartes, one of the founding fathers of modern science
and modern philosophy, was in part a rhetorical maneuver — a rhetorical maneuver
designed to craft for generative grammar a conceptual coherence distinct from the
governing empiricist, behaviorist, and relativist approaches. It is, indeed, a remarkable
fact that Chomsky was able to further his project of demarcating267 generative grammar
as a more scientific approach to the study of human language than the post-Bloomfieldian
approach by connecting his view of the mind with a dualist philosopher. Descartes is not,
however, the only philosopher with a metaphysical system at odds with contemporary
scientific materialism that Chomsky has, over the history of generative grammar, allied
his ideas with. In support of GB / P and P, Chomsky connected the project of generative
grammar with the ideas of another foundational idealist philosopher, packaging the
problem of language acquisition as (what he has referred to elsewhere as the poverty of
the stimulus) as “Plato’s problem.”
While Chomsky connected his view of the mind with dualist and rationalist
philosophers throughout much of the history of generative grammar, he has, however, in
the last decade substantively changed the tack of his historical/philosophical
266
This claim has been echoed by linguists in schools competing with generative grammar,
including the post-Bloomfieldians. Hall, for example, has charged generative grammar with being
“medieval ignorance” (Hall 129).
267
I have borrowed the notion of ‘rhetorical demarcation’ from Charles Alan Taylor’s Defining
Science.
Oenbring / 267
argumentation; Chomsky has gone from explicitly connecting his ideas with dualist
philosophers to actively arguing against the dualist view of the mind-body problem.
Indeed, under the Minimalist Program (MP), Chomsky’s historical/philosophical
argumentation has instead attempted to connect generative grammar with the simplicity
and elegance of physical systems; under MP, Chomsky’s revolutionary vision for
generative grammar has taken on a decidedly monist flavor (see, for example, Chomsky’s
2000 historical/philosophical text New Horizons in the Study of Language and Mind and
his 2002 university public lecture text On Nature and Language). That is to say,
Chomsky has been able to promote a revolutionary vision for the Minimalist Program by
rhetorically exorcising the ghost in the machine that he himself had seemingly argued for
throughout most of his career. (He, of course, never includes himself among the nowvilified dualists.)268
Indeed, the revolutionary vision of the Minimalist Program (which I will analyze
more substantively in the next chapter) has quite a different focus from the revolutionary
rhetorics of earlier programs. Rather than working to build the disciplinary legitimacy
and coherence of generative grammar by suggesting that the approach lays bare structures
268
The historical narrative I present here, however, makes the break seem much clearer than it
actually has been. What I describe in this section of this chapter is Chomsky’s overarching
tendencies over time in regard to the philosophers he has associated generative grammar with.
For example, Chomsky’s more recent naturalistic (a.k.a. monistic) appeals can be found in much
earlier publications (e.g., 1980’s Rules and Representations and 1981’s “A Naturalistic Approach
to Language and Cognition”). Furthermore, Chomsky’s analyses and appeals to Descartes’ work
continue into the eighties (e.g., 1984’s Modular Approaches to the Study of the Mind) and
nineties (e.g., 1991’s “Language, Politics, and Composition”). Keep in mind, however, that one
of the main functions of the historical/philosophical texts is to build the revolutionary appeal of
Chomsky’s works; it does not seem to matter whether or not Chomsky’s claims at any one point
in time actually are new. This is made even truer by the fact that Chomsky’s audiences for the
historical/philosophical texts remain relatively ignorant of generative grammar and linguistics;
Chomsky can in a real sense create the field of linguistics when he speaks to non-linguists.
Oenbring / 268
of a largely mysterious mind as was the focus from the Aspects program until Principles
and Parameters, the rhetoric of the Minimalist Program has increasingly connected
generative grammar with the physical sciences, frequently using analogies from
chemistry and physics; the rhetoric of MP seemingly suggests that the mind transcends
the messiness of biological systems. Indeed, much of Chomsky’s philosophical/historical
argumentation under MP has worked to emphasize that the human mind is ultimately a
machine controlled by chemical and physiological processes.269
In the remainder of the main body of this chapter, I shall specifically analyze how
Chomsky has, throughout his career, rhetorically used monist and dualist notions in order
to both promote a distinct disciplinary identity for generative grammar and build the
scientific prestige of generative grammar across the academy. As I have noted, this
section will primarily be an analysis of Chomsky’s external rhetoric: the argumentative
269
The situation is made even more complicated by the fact that Chomsky has, under MP,
become much more willing to make explicitly anti-foundational argumentative moves; while
Chomsky now argues explicitly that all is matter, he now is also not afraid to suggest in print that
all descriptions of nature are necessarily theory-laden. That is to say, Chomsky is willing to make
a classically monist statement like the following:
It is important to recognize that Cartesian dualism was a reasonable scientific thesis, but
one that disappeared three centuries ago. There has been no mind-body problem to
debate since. (On Nature and Language 70)
But will follow his seemingly monist statement by suggesting something surprisingly antifoundational:
This thesis did not disappear because of inadequacies of the Cartesian concept mind, but
because Newton’s demolition of the mechanical philosophy. It is common to ridicule
“Descartes’ error” in postulating mind, his “ghost in the machine.” But that mistakes
what happened: Newton exorcised the machine; the ghost remained intact. (On Nature
and Language 70-71)
This argumentative maneuver, which I will analyze specifically later in this chapter is, ultimately,
a move by Chomsky to soften his realist position; Chomsky has become under MP much more
willing to acknowledge that generative grammar may not be unequivocally laying bare the
structures of the mind.
Oenbring / 269
strategies that he has used in order to build the disciplinary prestige of generative
grammar for a general academic audience.270
In regard to Chomsky’s external argumentation I argue specifically that Chomsky
has, throughout his career, worked rhetorically in order to position generative grammar
within foundational monist/materialist and dualist/idealist perspectives — even when his
overall external rhetoric has seemingly lacked systematic coherence.271 As
argumentative frameworks, monist and dualist perspectives both have had much to offer
generative grammarians rhetorically: they both seemingly transcend the complexities of
biological systems. By his promotion of monist and dualist perspectives, Chomsky has
been able factor out the messiness of biological systems and to frame the mind as an
object amenable to description using formal logical operations like those used by
generative grammar. That is to say, Chomsky has described the mind using monist and
dualist/idealist rhetorics in order to both make a space for generative approaches and to
build the scientific prestige of generative descriptions of human languages.
The Rhetoric of Dualism
I should say that I approach classical rationalism not really as a historian of science or
a historian of philosophy … but rather from the point of view of, let's say, an art lover,
270
While there have been, for certain, some interesting points of intersection between the
rhetorics that Chomsky has used to promote his various programs for generative grammar among
both specialists in generative syntax and for a general academic audience, it is important to
distinguish between Chomsky’s external and internal rhetorics.
271
Interestingly, Chomsky’s external rhetoric under Principles and Parameters, the system of
generative grammar preceding MP, can be seen as a fusion of the rhetorical dualism of the
Aspects program with the rhetorical monism of MP.
Oenbring / 270
who wants to look at the seventeenth century to find in it things that are of particular
value, and that obtain part of their value in part because of the perspective with which
he approaches them.
Chomsky, The Chomsky-Foucault Debate
Around the time of his seminal mentalist work Aspects, Chomsky published
historical/philosophical works exploring the history of rationalist philosophy (a tradition
of thought of which Descartes was one of the prime sources), positioning himself as a
follower of a long and venerable tradition of thought (see, for example, Cartesian
Linguistics and Language and Mind).272 Chomsky’s move of positioning himself as heir
to the throne of Descartes was, I argue, an unmistakably rhetorical maneuver — a
maneuver which worked to crystallize a clear and distinct disciplinary identity for
generative linguistics.
While several scholars have argued that Chomsky’s and Descartes’ systems are
largely incommensurable,273 I acknowledge that Chomsky’s connection of his view of
the mind with Descartes is not totally unfounded. Both Descartes and Chomsky, for
example, argue that there are distinct well-formed notions that exist in the mind a priori
that any rational human being can easily access by reflection. This foundational
272
Similar historical/philosophical argumentation can, however, be found in even earlier works,
including 1964’s Current Issues in Linguistic Theory and Aspects itself.
273
There have, of course, been numerous studies over the years that have commented on whether
or not the similarities between Descartes’ and Chomsky’s projects are indeed substantive. Some
scholars have been more willing to accept the similarities (see, for example, Hildebrant’s
Cartesianische Linguistik and Fodor’s Modularity of Mind) than others (see, for example,
Aarsleff’s review of Cartesian Linguistics and Bouveresse’s “Cartesian Linguistics: Grandeur
and Decadence of a Myth”).
Oenbring / 271
assumption clearly undergirds the methodology of generative grammar; following
Chomsky’s lead, generative grammarians argue for the existence of innate cognitive
structures based on evidence as meager as the perceived grammaticality of a small set of
sentences vs. a different group of sentences — neither of which needs to be attested by a
corpus. That is to say, Chomsky is able to construe small distinctions in individual
languages as much more than banal cultural differences; he is able to construe these
distinctions as evidence for innate structures in the human mind.
Conversely, Descartes does not envision our ability to make clear and distinct
distinctions as something that demonstrates the architecture of the mind. While Descartes
does indeed believe that our ability to make clear distinctions is innate, he does not,
however, suggest that this ability is a product of our biology; Descartes does not believe
that our ability to make clear distinctions is something produced by the physiology of the
mind (matter and mind being two separate things in Descartes’ system). Rather,
Descartes believes that our ability to make clear distinctions is an ability that exists
because of presence of God. Consider the following lush passage from Descartes’
Meditations:
firstly, because I know that all which I clearly and distinctly conceive can be
produced by God exactly as I conceive it, it is sufficient that I am able clearly and
distinctly to conceive one thing apart from another, in order to be certain that the
one is different from the other, seeing they may at least be made to exist
separately, by the omnipotence of God; and it matters not by what power this
separation is made, in order to be compelled to judge them different; and,
Oenbring / 272
therefore, merely because I know with certitude that I exist, and because, in the
meantime, I don’t observe that aught necessarily belongs to my nature or essence
beyond my being a thinking thing, I rightly conclude that my essence consists
only in my being a thinking thing, [or a substance whose essence or nature is
merely thinking]. (91)
As this quote suggests, Descartes clearly connects our ability to make clear distinctions
between objects (what would be our intuitions regarding the grammaticality of sentences
in Chomsky’s system) with the action of an omnipotent God.
Whenever Chomsky connects his view of the mind with the work of Descartes,
Chomsky’s reading, like many of his readings of philosophers, is highly focused;
Chomsky’s reading of Descartes is strategic. Indeed, Chomsky primarily drew upon
Descartes in the sixties and seventies in order to promote the notion that the human
ability to craft unique utterances (that is, our ability to use language creatively) is totally
unique in the natural world. However, evolutionary biologists have in the past few
decades engaged in a heated debate regarding whether the human ability to produce and
use language is all that unique, and some scholars (e.g., Pinker) have been more willing
to trumpet Chomsky’s notion that the human faculty of language is totally unique than
others (e.g., Lieberman).274 Nevertheless, Chomsky’s persistent rhetorical deployment of
Descartes’ name in order to support his claims that human syntax is a distinct and
autonomous cognitive faculty totally unique in the natural world seemingly suggests that
See, for example, Lieberman’s Eve Spoke and Toward an Evolutionary Biology of Language
and Pinker’s The Language Instinct.
274
Oenbring / 273
he understands the human faculty of language as something that exists on a different
ontological plane from mere biology.
We see Chomsky engaging in this strategic reading of Descartes in his two
famous philosophical/historical texts of Aspects period: 1966’s Cartesian Linguistics,
and1968’s Language and Mind. As Chomsky notes early on in Cartesian Linguistics (3),
Descartes has little to say directly on the subject of language other than his famous
assertion that humans’ ability to develop unique utterances distinguishes them from
animals. Chomsky quotes Descartes’ Discourse on Method:
it is a very remarkable fact that there are none so depraved and stupid, without
even accepting idiots that they cannot arrange different words together, forming
of them a statement by which they make known their thoughts; while, on the other
hand, there is no other animal, however perfect and fortunately circumstanced it
may be, which can do the same. (qtd. in Chomsky, 1966: 4)
Chomsky, however, while acknowledging that Descartes has little to say on the subject of
language other than this comment, still places this notion, a concept he calls the creative
aspect of language use at the very center of his reading of Descartes; Chomsky latches
onto this notion, operationally defining Cartesian philosophy as the creative aspect of
language use (6).275
275
Indeed, in his famous 1971 debate with Foucault, the French philosopher challenges
Chomsky’s reading, arguing that:
when you speak of creativity as conceived by Descartes, I wonder if you don’t transpose
to Descartes an idea with is to be found among his successors or even certain of his
contemporaries. According to Descartes, the mind was not so very creative. It saw, it
perceived, it was illuminated by the evidence. (The Chomsky-Foucault Debate 13)
Oenbring / 274
Indeed, Chomsky devotes much of Cartesian Linguistics and Language and Mind
to developing a conceptual genealogy of the history of the notion of the creative aspect of
language use. That is to say, Chomsky devotes a substantial portion of these books to
following the threads of the creative aspect of language use through later rationalist and
romantic philosophers who have more to say directly on the subject of language (e.g.,
Cordemoy, Huarte, Schlegel, and Von Humboldt). While Chomsky never explicitly
argues in Cartesian Linguistics and Language and Mind that the philosophers he presents
are direct precursors to his own ideas, he frequently suggests the existence of direct
parallels between the works of the philosophers he analyzes and “contemporary research”
(72).276
Numerous commentators have suggested that Chomsky makes inappropriate
connections between his own work and the ideas of Descartes and the other philosophers
that he analyzes in Cartesian Linguistics and Language and Mind. Aarsleff's scathing
(1970) review of Cartesian Linguistics, for example, argues all of the following: that
Chomsky lacks “a reasonably comprehensive knowledge of the texts that are used and of
the total work of each major figure” (571); that Chomsky relies on “inferior sources”
(571); and that the book is deficient in “overall coherence”(572). Aarsleff's major
concern seems to be that Chomsky traces, incorrectly, the strands of rationalist thought
“straight through the German Romantics down to Wilhelm von Humboldt” (572).
276
Chomsky, for example, suggests that a protean form of the distinction between deep structure
and surface structure (terms that he coyly refers to as “recent terminology” [33]) can be found in
the work of the Port-Royal grammarians.
Oenbring / 275
Chomsky's ability to construe his methods as both part of a long tradition,
recently and unfairly discarded, and, furthermore, as newer, fresher, and more
revolutionary than the empiricist program, no doubt helped him in his task of
demarcating the generative approach as the only properly scientific approach to study
human languages. At bare minimum, Chomsky's presentation of his ideas as descendants
of Descartes and other rationalist philosophers in Cartesian Linguistics worked to
rhetorically construct the existence of a pendulum swing back to rationalism, a notion
clearly intimated in the book's subtitle: “A Chapter in the History of Rationalist
Thought.”
We can see similar rhetorical work in how Chomsky frames Descartes’ theory of
transcendental ideas. As I have suggested, while Chomsky’s a priori ideas in the mind
are formal operations that stand for biological structures that generative grammarians
hope will eventually be discovered, Descartes’ transcendental ideas are, in fact,
transcendental (i.e., they are not part of the physiology of the mind). As Hildebrandt
notes in his Cartesianische Linguistik, Chomsky never claims that humans to have a
metaphysical “connection with a higher intelligence” (40, my translation). Rather,
Chomsky believes that the physiological makeup of the human brain makes it
qualitatively dislike that of animals.
While Descartes focuses in the Meditations (the work where he most clearly
explicates his theory of innate transcendental ideas) on the divine origin of our ability to
make clear distinctions, Chomsky presents in Cartesian Linguistics only those passages
Oenbring / 276
from Descartes' discussion of transcendental ideas that seem more in debt to the Platonic
tradition than Christian theology. Chomsky quotes Descartes’ “Reply to Objections V”:
Hence when first in infancy we see a triangular figure depicted on paper, this
figure cannot show us how a real triangle out to be conceived, in the way in
geometricians consider it, because the true triangle is contained in this figure, just
as the rough statue of Mercury is contained in a rough block of wood. But
because we already possess within us the idea of a true triangle, and it can be
more easily conceived by our mind than the more complex figure of the triangle
drawn on paper, we, therefore, when we see that composite figure, apprehend not
it itself, but rather the authentic triangle. (qtd. in Cartesian Linguistics 69)
Chomsky’s decision to present the above passage from Descartes’ discussion of
transcendental ideas is interesting for several reasons. First of all, the example suggests
that there exist idealized geometric forms within the mind, and therefore seems more in
debt to the Platonic tradition than the Christian tradition. By representing the mind as
containing abstract geometric forms, Chomsky furthers his project of framing the human
faculty of language as an object amenable to formal description using logical operations.
Moreover, by presenting passages from Descartes’ discussion of transcendental ideas that
seems more a product of Platonic thinking than Christian theology, Chomsky can trace
the lineage of his ideas into the distant past while circumventing the religious baggage
inherent in Descartes' philosophical system. By extricating the religious baggage of
Descartes' thinking, Chomsky is able to lay claim to the prestige of Descartes' ideas and
Oenbring / 277
name without explicitly promoting his psychological dualism — a metaphysical system
that would have precluded the Chomsky's work from being accepted as a science.
The External Rhetoric of GB / P and P
While Chomsky connected his view of the mind to Descartes in the sixties and
seventies, in the eighties in his historical/philosophical argumentation in support of GB /
P and P, Chomsky switched his idealist philosopher of choice to a foundational
philosopher whose doctrine of innate ideas appears at first to be much more secular; in
support of Principles and Parameters (see, for example, Language and Problems of
Knowledge and Knowledge of Language: Its Nature, Origin, and Use), Chomsky framed
the problem of language acquisition (what he elsewhere calls the poverty of the stimulus),
as Plato’s problem. Chomsky formulates Plato’s problem based on a particular moment
in Plato’s Meno:
Socrates demonstrates that an untutored slave boy knows the principles of
geometry by leading him, through a series of questions, to the discovery of
theorems of geometry. This experiment raises a problem that is still with us: How
was the slave boy able to find truths of geometry without instruction or
information? (Language and Problems of Knowledge 4)
As I have suggested, the Platonic tradition, in particular by its suggestion that there exist
idealized geometric forms in the mind, has been rhetorically useful to Chomsky. Platonic
transcendental ideas, unlike Cartesian ones, frame the mind as an object amenable to
formal logical description seemingly without dualist baggage. Plato’s problem, however,
Oenbring / 278
comes with its own attendant dualism and mysticism. As Chomsky acknowledges,
Plato’s answer to the problem of how the child understood the geometric principles was
to suggest that the knowledge had been placed in the boy’s mind in an earlier existence,
only to have that knowledge reawakened by Socrates (Language and Problems of
Knowledge 4).
While the notion of Plato’s problem was certainly the most prominent feature of
Chomsky’s historical/philosophical argumentation under GB/ P and P, Chomsky at this
time also began introducing analogies from the physical sciences in order to frame
generative descriptions of language and mind. Indeed, under GB/P and P, Chomksy
began comparing the mind explicitly to chemical and physical systems, stating for
example in Language and Problems of Knowledge that:
When we speak of the mind, we are speaking at some level of abstraction of yet
unknown physical mechanisms of the brain, much as those who spoke on the
valence of oxygen or the benzene ring were speaking at some level of abstraction
about physical mechanisms, then unknown. Just as the discoveries of the chemist
set the stage for further inquiry into underlying mechanisms, so today the
discoveries of the linguist-psychologist set the stage for further inquiry into brain
mechanisms, inquiry that must proceed blindly without knowing what it is
looking for, in the absence of such understanding, expressed at an abstract level.
(7)
As is clear in this passage, Chomsky rationalizes the abstract nature of generative
descriptions of language by comparing generative grammarians’ task with physical
Oenbring / 279
scientists speaking at a high degree of abstraction so that they may follow a line of
inquiry. Of course, the two examples that Chomsky presents (the valence of oxygen and
the benzene ring) were lines of inquiry that eventually proved fruitful. This passage is,
furthermore, an example of what I have called monist argumentation. By ‘monist’ I
mean not just that Chomsky argues for a purely material physical system; rather, I mean
that Chomsky attempts to frame the mind as something that behaves with the
mathematical preciseness of a very simple physical or chemical system. In this passage,
for example, Chomsky seemingly suggests that the human mind, arguably the most
intricate and mysterious biological system ever produced by the work of natural
selection, might be described as simply and precisely as a molecule of benzene.
Naturalism in the External Rhetoric of the Minimalist Program
As I have suggested, one of the more remarkable features of Chomsky’s external
argumentation in recent years has been his shift away from connecting the mind with
dualist philosophers, instead framing the human brain as an object ultimately controlled
by physical processes.277 Indeed, Chomsky has gone from connecting his work with the
ideas of dualist philosophers to actively arguing against the dualist view of the mindbody problem — the latter rhetorical position being one of Chomsky’s most important
external argumentative strategies under the Minimalist Program, Chomsky’s most recent
version of generative grammar. Indeed, Chomsky has worked to craft a uniquely monist
(a.k.a. a ‘naturalistic’) revolutionary vision for generative grammar under MP. Since this
Accordingly, many of Chomsky’s monist proclamations seem remarkably similar to claims
made by *gasp* Bloomfield.
277
Oenbring / 280
rhetorical shift, Chomsky has, characteristically, argued for monism vigorously,
seemingly forgetting that he himself had been a champion of what he now disparagingly
refers to as “methodological dualism” throughout most of his career. In his 2000 book
New Horizons in the Study of Language and Mind,278 Chomsky, for example, laments
that dualist phantoms still haunt much inquiry into the study of language and mind,
stating, for example, that:
By “naturalism” I mean “methodological naturalism,” counterposed to
“methodological dualism”: the doctrine that in the quest for theoretical
understanding, language and mind are to be studied in some manner other than the
ways we investigate natural objects, as a matter or principle. This is a doctrine
that few may espouse, but that dominates much practice, I believe. (135)
As we see in this quote, Chomsky has attempted in his recent externally focused
argumentation to frame languages and minds as natural objects: objects that behave with
the preciseness of physical laws, not biological systems.
Once again, I argue that these moves are rhetorical; I argue that Chomsky has
worked to craft this monist vision for generative grammar under MP in order to promote
yet another would-be conceptual revolution. Indeed, Chomsky clearly uses visionary
language to describe this new-found ‘naturalistic’ approach to the study of languages,
stating in New Horizons in the Study of Language and Mind that:
278
The volume New Horizons is, like Studies on Semantics in Generative Grammar and The
Minimalist Program, a collection of mostly previously published essays from the previous few
years.
Oenbring / 281
I would like to discuss an approach to the mind that considers language and
similar phenomena to be elements of the natural world, to be studied by ordinary
methods of empirical inquiry. I will be using the terms ‘mind’ and ‘mental’ here
with no metaphysical import. Thus I understand ‘mental’ to be on par with
‘chemical,’ ‘optical,’ or ‘electrical’. (106)
As we can see in this quote, in the external rhetoric of MP Chomsky clearly attempts to
connect minds and languages with simple physical processes, a maneuver, I argue,
designed for the purpose of framing languages in a way that makes them seemingly
amenable to description using simple formal languages. Moreover, Chomsky’s attempt to
suggest that languages and minds behave in a manner similar to physical processes is part
and parcel of a broader rhetorical maneuver in the Minimalist Program: the claim that
languages are optimally-designed systems (this is an issue that I will develop more in the
next chapter).
Having largely disavowed Descartes, Chomsky now interestingly associates
another father of modern Western science with the notion of the creative aspect of
language use, a scientist whose system has a much more mechanical allure: specifically
Galileo. Chomsky begins his 1999 lecture at the Scuola Normal Superiore, Pisa, later
printed as 2002’s On Nature and Language, by stating that:
It would be appropriate to begin with some of the thoughts of the master, who
does not disappoint us, even though the topics I want to discuss are remote from
his primary concerns. Galileo may have been the first to recognize clearly the
significance of the core property of human language, and one of its most
Oenbring / 282
distinctive properties; the use of finite means to express an unlimited array of
thoughts. (45)
As this quote suggests, Chomsky still looks backward, connecting the beginning of
inquiry into the creative aspect of language use with the very beginnings of modern
Western science. However, he now associates the problem of our ability to make infinite
syntactic strings out of finite means with a philosopher/scientist, Galileo, whose project
worked to build optimism that we can develop mathematical descriptions of the laws of
nature.
While Chomsky’s popular-focused argumentation under the Aspects program
was, through its promotion of the notion of well-formed ideas in the mind, designed to
create a space for generative descriptions of the language (that is to say, Chomsky’s
argumentation created a conceptual foundation that authorized generative grammar as a
unique and valuable scientific discipline), Chomsky has, under MP, attempted to build
the scientific prestige of generative grammar by suggesting that it can be a willing
participant in an emerging unified totally material (a.k.a. a ‘naturalistic’) description of
the mind. Indeed, Chomsky has attempted to rhetorically position generative grammar
under MP as collapsing disciplinary boundaries. In New Horizons Chomsky questions
those who would resist a unification of the sciences, arguing that:
A naturalistic approach to language and mind will seek to improve each approach,
hoping for more meaningful unification. It is common to suppose that there is
something deeply problematic in the theory that is more solidly established on
naturalistic grounds, the “mental one”; and to worry about problems of
Oenbring / 283
“eliminationism” or “physicalism” that have yet to be formulated coherently.
Furthermore, this dualist tendency not only dominates discussion and debate, but
is virtually presupposed, a curious phenomenon of the history of thought that
merits closer attention. (117)
As this quote suggests, Chomsky has worked rhetorically under MP to revivify the
program of generative grammar by positioning it as an approach to the study of languages
most suited for participation in an emerging unified totally material description of the
physiology of the mind.279
The Afterlife of Dualism in Generative Grammar
While Chomsky argued vigorously in the sixties that linguistics should view itself
as a branch of cognitive psychology (i.e., rather than a branch of anthropology or as a
social science as many of the post-Bloomfiedians and other pre-Chomskyan linguists had
done), generative grammarians for a long time did little to actually position their work as
part of an emerging purely material description of the brain; although Chomsky achieved
his institutional victory largely by positioning his work as laying bare the secrets of the
human mind, he did not attempt to make his work agree with the findings and data of
mainstream biologists or psychologists. That is to say, generative grammarians seemed
perfectly happy (and many still do) to postulate their formal operations in the mind in
279
It should be noted, however, that Chomsky has, under the Minimalist Program, made these
moves to lay a new monist foundation for generative grammar while frequently making
unequivocally anti-foundational statements, often in very close quarters to his monist claims. That
is to say, Chomsky has become more willing to accept under MP the idea that scholarly
descriptions of nature may be always already theory-laden.
Oenbring / 284
total disciplinary isolation, without much of any data from biology and psychology to
support their findings.
What’s more, whenever moments of contact between generative grammar and
genuine psychologists and biologists have occurred, they have occurred largely on
Chomsky’s terms. While the gap between generative grammarians and genuine
biologists may seem to have waned in the past few decades (indeed, one of Chomsky’s
most recent publications on the issue of language is his 2002 joint publication with two
evolutionary biologists in Science “The Faculty of Language”), these moments of
apparent interdisciplinary knowledge-building have largely occurred when the biologist
has adopted the Chomsky/Fodor assumption that the mind is highly modular, consisting
of autonomous systems (see, for example, Pinker’s The Language Instinct and Hauser’s
Moral Minds). The notion that the mind is modular and made up of autonomous systems
is still, however, hotly contested among cognitive scientists (see, for example, Uttal’s
2001 book The New Phrenology). Indeed, those biologists and cognitive scientists that
have attempted to cross the divide between the physical matter of the brain and
generative accounts necessarily seem to assume the existence of overly-idealized systems
in the mind (e.g., Pinker’s language instinct). All of this suggests that the autonomy of
generative grammar as an intelligible mode of inquiry seemingly relies upon keeping
descriptions abstract and formal; generative grammar dissolves as an intelligible mode of
inquiry when one attempts to cross the biology boundary and locate the formal systems in
real matter. That is to say, despite Chomsky’s newfound monism, idealist and dualist
Oenbring / 285
notions may have to continue to haunt generative grammar if it is to remain a distinct
discipline.
As I have suggested in this chapter, despite claiming that he is committed to a
purely materialistic worldview, many of Chomksy’s arguments appear strangely
dualistic. This is also the case with how Chomsky has dealt with the notion of the
evolution of Universal Grammar. Indeed, Chomsky often dismisses attempts to connect
the development of UG with the gradual evolution of real physiological structures (for an
overview of this see Newmeyer’s piece in Hurford et al.’s edited volume Approaches to
the Evolution of Language). Instead, Chomsky has expressed a commitment to
describing the potentials of human syntax according to constraints imposed by a posited
cognitive faculty, a faculty that he sees as autonomous (i.e., distinct from general
intelligence and/or the physiology of articulation); Chomsky is interested merely in
describing the potentials of UG, not questioning why or how it developed. Chomsky,
strangely, even argues consistently against the notion that UG could have been produced
by the work of natural selection. Newmeyer, for example, notes that “Chomsky appears
to be perfectly willing to regard UG as unique in the natural world, immune, it would
seem, from the set of forces that shape other biological systems” (Newmeyer 306). It is,
indeed, interesting that Chomsky still maintains the position that UG was not selected for
by the work of evolution under the Minimalist Program, where much of the rhetorical
focus is on the supposed perfection of human languages. How UG could ever become a
perfectly-formed biological system without the work of natural selection remains quite a
mystery. What’s more, many biologists are even hesitant to suggest that natural selection
Oenbring / 286
could ever produce a perfectly formed system without vestigial structures (i.e.,
evolutionary residue of no particular use) (see, for example, Gould and Lewontin
[1979]).280
Chomsky has, nevertheless, attempted to reconcile the tensions between his
commitment to monism and his desire to describe language as an autonomous, perfectlyformed system by suggesting that much of the content of UG, the cognitive structures
that distinguish humans from hominids and apes not capable of elaborate syntactic
constructions, was a coded by a great mutation of a single gene. This move is, of course,
rhetorical. Chomsky has attempted to maintain the autonomy of generative grammar by
radically reducing the scope of the biological processes that need to be deciphered for
Universal Grammar to be totally decoded: the effects of merely one gene. This move is
rhetorical for the following reason: by reducing the scope of the physiological process
that need to be deciphered Chomsky can frame the mind in such a way that generative
grammarians can maintain hope that we may someday develop a rich description of UG.
Nevertheless, by suggesting that that the faculty of language developed almost
instantaneously and now behaves perfectly, Chomsky seems eerily close to suggesting
language did not evolve, but was rather instilled by the touch of God.
A Stylistic Analysis of Chomsky’s Use of Genre
In the remainder of this chapter I present the findings of a short corpus study that I
have conducted, using corpora that I have developed for each of Chomsky’s genres /
For an incisive, accessible analysis of Chomsky’s views regarding evolution see Dennet’s
Darwin’s Dangerous Idea.
280
Oenbring / 287
registers that I have analyzed in this chapter. Although the texts included in the corpora
are not some of Chomsky’s more influential texts, this does not weaken the possible
interest of the study. The goal of the study is to understand the conventions of
Chomsky’s various genres, and any of his texts within those genres should seemingly do
equally well. I have chosen the texts that I have in each of the corpora because they are
widely available in electronic form on the web.281 While I have tried to include in each
of the corpora a balance of recent and old texts, the contents of the corpora are skewed
toward more recent texts as a whole, as those are more likely to be widely available on
the web and/or accessible directly in electronic form through my university library’s
subscriptions.282 The corpora for each of the genres are of comparable size (each on the
order of 40,000 words).283 For the study I used two common software platforms for
corpus linguistic research: AntConc (a freeware concordance program developed by
Laurence Anthony of Waseda University, Japan) and WordSmith Tools 4.0 (a common
lexical frequency, keyword, and concordance package distributed by Oxford University
Press). (I also used these corpora to produce the pictorial representations of word
frequencies [using the Wordle technology284 developed by Jonathan Feinberg of IBM
Global Research] that I have presented in several places in this study.)
281
I list the source texts for all three corpora at the end of this chapter.
This is especially the case with the technical corpus, which includes two recent unpublished
manuscripts.
283
The technical corpus is a total of 40,131 words. The political corpus comes to a total of
41,662. As there are fewer historical/philosophical texts widely available on the web, the total for
the historical/philosophical corpus is only 26,559 words.
284
Check it out at http://www.wordle.net/
282
Oenbring / 288
In Table 2, I present some basic statistics regarding the three corpora. Not
surprisingly, the technical corpus has higher average word length (characters per word),
no doubt due to specialized terminology such as interface and movement. The remaining
measures presented in the chart are, however, somewhat surprising. Perhaps the most
interesting finding in this chart is the difference in average sentence length between the
historical/philosophical (30) and political (27.7) corpora and the technical corpus (8.8).
The shorter average sentence length of the technical corpus leads to a greater Flesch
Reading Ease285 score, a broadly-used measure (probably most notably [or notoriously]
by Microsoft Word). That the technical corpus would receive the highest Flesch Reading
Ease score runs counter to expectations.
Basic Corpora Statistics
Historical/Philosophical
Corpus
Words per Sentence
Characters per
Word
Passive Sentences
Flesch Reading
Ease
Political Corpus
30
27.7
Technical
Corpus
8.8
5.1
21%
5
17%
5.2
8%
33.9
33.8
46.6
Table 2
Nevertheless, we are led to a few broad conclusions by these basic statistics.
First of all, the prose of the political texts and the historical/philosophical texts are similar
285
Flesch Reading Ease score is calculated with the following formula:
206.835 – (1.015 x average sentence length) – (84.6 x average number of syllables per word)
Oenbring / 289
to one another. Broadly stated, we can suggest that Chomsky’s historical/philosophical
work and his political work have what we might call essayistic prose. Conversely, we
might say that the technical corpus, having shorter sentence length and even significantly
fewer passive voice constructions, has stripped down prose. Indeed, one might suggests
that Chomsky writes in this stripped down manner in his technical pieces to build the
scientific ethos of his accounts.
I now move to my study of keywords for each corpus using WordSmith Tools
software. Programs such as WordSmith tools produce keyword lists by comparing the
frequency of lexical items in one corpus with the frequency of the same lexical item in
another reference corpus. For this study, I have chosen to use the other two Chomskyan
corpora as reference corpora for determining the keywords of the third. This is a
particularly valuable approach for highlighting the differences in word choice in each of
the corpora. I have limited the keywords that I report to the first twenty results. I refer to
the first twenty suggested by the software as the entire set of keywords.
As can be expected, the keyword lists for the technical corpus when using both
the political corpus and the historical/philosophical corpus as reference corpora are
dominated by the technical vocabulary of generative grammar (including terms like
phase, merge, spec, head, and movement).
Technical Corpus Keyword
N TECHNICAL W/ POLITICAL
TECHNICAL W/ HP
Oenbring / 290
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
LANGUAGE
C
V
T
PHASE
INTERFACE
MERGE
SPEC
FEATURES
PROPERTIES
HEAD
MOVEMENT
PROBE
UG
FEATURE
IM
STRUCTURE
COMPUTATION
SYNTACTIC
MIT
C
T
V
PHASE
MERGE
SPEC
MOVEMENT
INTERFACE
MIT
UG
AGREEMENT
IM
HEAD
PROBE
XP
CI
SMT
FEATURE
EDGE
OPERATIONS
Table 3
Interestingly, initialsms are common in the both keyword lists for the technical corpus.
The place that UG (the intialism form of Universal Grammar) takes in both keyword lists
for the technical corpus is particularly interesting, and, moreover, supports the claim that
Chomsky willingly chooses initialisms and other technical-sounding language in his
technical works in order to support the scientific ethos and disciplinary autonomy of
generative grammar.
Oenbring / 291
Similarly, as could be expected, both keyword lists for the historical/philosophical
corpus are dominated by terms that Chomsky uses when talking about large scale
methodological and philosophical issues (e.g., innate, language, grammar, mind). As a
whole, this finding supports the claim that world creation is one of the primary rhetorical
tasks of the historical/philosophical genre (see Table 4).
Historical/Philosophical Corpus Keywords
Oenbring / 292
N HP W/ TECHNICAL
HP W/ POLITICAL
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
LANGUAGE
GRAMMAR
PROPERTIES
LANGUAGES
SYSTEMS
INNATE
MENTAL
IS
THEORY
THAT
MIND
STRUCTURE
OF
LEARNING
NATURAL
HUMAN
STUDY
SYSTEM
GENERATIVE
LINGUISTIC
INNATE
MIND
HUMAN
THIS
HE
HIS
NATURALISTIC
OF
KNOWLEDGE
WORLD
CERTAIN
GRAMMAR
ORGANISATION
MENTAL
WE
SCIENCE
STUDY
BEHAVIOUR
PSYCHOLOGY
LECTURE
Table 4
Another interesting finding in the lists of keywords for the historical/philosophical
corpus is that the personal pronouns we and he (as well as the possessive adjective form
his) show up in the keyword list when the technical genre is used as the reference corpus,
but not when the political genre is used as the reference corpus. As a whole, Chomsky’s
increased use of personal pronouns in the historical/philosophical texts can be seen as
evidence for the reduced formality and the more general audience of the
historical/philosophical texts in comparison to the technical texts. A search of the
concordance of he and his using WordSmith suggests that Chomsky usually uses the
Oenbring / 293
terms in the historical/philosophical texts in one of two ways: either to refer to the work
of other scholars (e.g., “Most certainly Hume was wrong when he wanted to derive all
that is a priori from that which the senses supply …”) or to speak of a general human
subject, often named ‘Jones’ (e.g., “If Jones has the language L, he knows many things:
for example, that house rhymes with mouse”).
The keywords for Chomsky’s political texts are, similarly, not as a whole
surprising, reflecting the general concerns of Chomsky’s political texts. Keywords that
appear in the top twenty when using either the technical or the historical/philosophical
corpus as the reference include the following: war, American, states, policy,
international, political, united, and military. A slightly more interesting finding is that
was appears as a keyword when using either the technical or the historical/philosophical
texts as reference corpus, and that had appears as a keyword with the technical corpus as
reference, indicating the greater preference for the past tense (or participle constructions)
and, presumably, the narration of past events in the political texts.
Political Corpus Keywords
N POLITICAL W/ TECHNICAL
POLITICAL W/HP
Oenbring / 294
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
WAR
THE
AMERICAN
STATES
PEOPLE
WAS
POWER
WORLD
INTERNATIONAL
POLITICAL
GOVERNMENT
US
UNITED
POLICY
FOREIGN
OUR
HE
MILITARY
UN
HAD
AMERICAN
INTERNATIONAL
WAR
US
GOVERNMENT
WHO
UNITED
POLICY
FOREIGN
STATES
POLITICAL
MILITARY
THE
WAS
UN
AGREEMENT
CHINA
WASHINGTON
VIETNAM
BOMBING
Table 5
Perhaps the most remarkable finding of the keyword list for the political corpus is
the presence of the definite article the with both the technical and the
historical/philosophical texts as reference corpus. As a whole, this may indicate that
writers may demonstrate a greater preference for the definite article when they, as
Chomsky does in his political texts, relate past and present events that occur in the real
world — rather than in an abstracted world of scholarly theorizing.
Oenbring / 295
I now complete my corpus study by presenting lists of 3-grams for each of the
corpora —lists developing using the AntConc package. 3-grams are reoccurring strings of
three words. For this study, I present the top fifteen most frequent 3-grams for each
corpus. As in the keyword search, the 3-grams for the technical corpus are dominated by
nuanced, technical expressions used among generative grammarians that Chomsky has
authorized and promoted. (One should note that the technical corpus is slanted highly
toward Chomsky’s most recent texts.) Of particular interest are expressions like the c-I
interface, the phase head, and the faculty of language.
Technical Corpus 3-Grams
Rank
1
2
3
4
4
5
6
6
6
6
6
6
6
14
14
3-Gram
in terms of
the c-i interface
the theory of
the driver picture
the phase head
the phase level
at the phase
faculty of language
has to be
the faculty of
the mapping to
the sm interface
there is no
it is not
three factors in
Frequency
35
26
20
18
18
16
15
15
15
15
15
15
15
14
14
Table 6
Oenbring / 296
The 3-gram list for the historical/philosophical corpus demonstrates the large-scale
methodological focus of these texts, including strings like: the study of, the language
faculty, the problem of, the theory of, study of language. While the 3-grams for the
historical/philosophical corpus are less technical, they are, understandably, largely
examples of what we might call academic idiom.
Historical / Philosophical Corpus 3-Grams
Rank
1
2
3
3
5
5
7
7
9
10
11
11
13
13
13
3-Gram
Frequency
the study of
42
the language faculty
24
and so on
22
the problem of
22
of the world
17
seems to me
17
of the language
16
there is no
16
it is not
15
aspects of the
14
it seems to
13
the theory of
13
study of language
12
the case of
12
the fact that
12
Table 7
Finally, perhaps the most remarkable finding of the 3-gram list for the political corpus is
the common occurrence of both place and item names (see figure 8). The list of 3-grams
Oenbring / 297
for the political corpus includes: the United States, the West Bank, the Soviet Union, and
both New York Times and the New York.
Political Corpus 3-Grams
Rank
1
2
3
4
4
4
7
7
7
7
7
12
12
12
15
3-Gram
the united states
new york times
the new york
for example the
one of the
the fact that
the enlightened states
the responsibility of
the right to
the us and
the west bank
at the time
in the west
in the world
the soviet union
Frequency
51
23
15
12
12
12
11
11
11
11
11
10
10
10
9
Table 8
As in the list of keywords for the political corpus, the definite article the is
overrepresented in the 3-grams for the political corpus. In fact, the only 3-gram in the top
fifteen of the political corpus that does not include the is new york times (obviously a
fragment of the new york times). This can, perhaps, be attributed to the fact that the
object of the political texts is the real world. While the earlier statistical measures of the
corpora seemed to suggest extensive similarities between the prose styles of the
historical/philosophical texts and the political texts, only one phrase that we might call
personal idiom (the fact that) shows up in the lists of 3-grams for both.
Oenbring / 298
Conclusion
As I have noted, Chomsky’s first confrontation with philosophy in the early fifties
was an attempt to put to work a rigorous set of methods for use in analyzing the syntax of
human languages. Conversely, Chomsky’s later confrontations with philosophy in these
historical/philosophical texts are designed to help Chomsky explain the distinguishing
features of his system, and by turns, to build the revolutionary ethos / identity of
generative work. While Chomsky’s early confrontations with philosophy were attempts
to appropriate contemporary methods, Chomsky’s later explanatory
historical/philosophical texts are governed by appeals to ‘classic’ figures in early modern
philosophy and science. One of the primary functions of these historical/philosophical
appeals is to frame Chomsky’s work as in dialogue with the masters, an appeal that no
doubt has a much greater effect on broader audiences rather than technical audiences.
(Indeed, why else, other than to build his authority as a classic figure, would Chomsky
bother in 2006 to release a third edition of Language and Mind, a book presenting a
series of claims that he has long since abandoned or updated?)
While Chomsky uses these historical/philosophical appeals to invoke the
authority of tradition, he also uses them to help craft the revolutionary identity of his
work; Chomsky finds precedent in previous, ‘classic’ scientific revolutions to build the
case for the one he is attempting to develop in the present. Conversely, in his technical
texts Chomsky sponsors methodological machinery serving, in effect, to constitute the
community of generative grammarians. By sponsoring new sets of terminology,
Oenbring / 299
Chomsky can create competing factions, granting one the legitimacy of his authority. By
adopting the technical methods of non-generative groups, he can make their techniques
part of the model; he can co-opt their methods. What’s more, by relabeling and
rerationalizing technical methods, Chomsky can create the appearance of progress in the
model. The evidence suggests that Chomsky’s strategic deployment of his repertoire of
genres is an important element of his rhetoric: his available means of persuasion.
Oenbring / 300
Corpora Contents
Historical/Philosophical Corpus
Chomsky, Noam. Language and Mind. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1968. 58
-85. 29 Jan 2008 <http:// http://www.chomsky.info/books/mind01.htm>.
——. “Language as a Natural Object.” Mind. 104 (1995): 1-61.
Technical Corpus
——. “Approaching UG from Below.” Unpublished manuscript. 2006. 29 Jan. 2008.
<http://www.punksinscience.org/kleanthes/courses/MATERIALS/Chomsky_Ap
proaching-UG.pdf>.
——. “On Phases.” Unpublished manuscript. 2005. 29 Jan 2008.
<http://www.phon.ucl.ac.uk/home/hans/mrg/chomsky_onphases_1204.pdf>.
——. “Three Factors in Language Design.” Linguistic Inquiry 36 (2005): 1-22.
Political Corpus
——. “Free Market Rhetoric.” Lies of our Times. 7 Jan. 1994. 29 Jan. 2008.
<http://www.e-text.org/text/Chomsky - free market rhetoric.rtf>.
——. “The Israel-Arafat Agreement.” Z Magazine. Oct. 1993. 29 Jan. 2008.
<http://www.e-text.org/text/Chomsky - The Israel Arafat Agreement.doc>.
——. “Jubilee 2000.” ZNet. 15 May 1998. 29 Jan. 2008. <http://www.e
-text.org/text/Chomsky - cancel 3rd world debt.rtf>.
Oenbring / 301
——. “Kosovo Peace Accord.” Z Magazine. Jul. 1999. 29 Jan. 2008. <http://www.e
-text.org/text/Chomsky - kosovo.rtf>.
——. “Libya.” Lies of our Times. Jan. 1992. 29 Jan. 2008. <http://www.e text.org/text/Chomsky - libya.rtf>.
——. From The New Statesman. Jul. 1994. 29 Jan. 2008. <http://www.e
-text.org/text/Chomsky - new statesman.rtf>.
——. “The Passion for Free Markets.” Z Magazine. May 1997. 29 Jan. 2008.
<http://www.zmag.org/zmag/articles/may97chomsky.html>.
——. “Responsibility of Intellectuals.” The New York Review of Books. 23 Feb. 1967.
29 Jan. 2008. <http://www.chomsky.info/articles/19670223.htm>.
——. “Terrorism, American Style.” World Policy Journal. 24 (2007): 44-45.
——. “The War in Afghanistan.” New Delhi Online. 30 Dec. 2001. 29 Jan. 2008.
<http://www.e-text.org/text/Chomsky - on afghanistan.doc>.
Oenbring / 302
Chapter 7: The Rhetoric of the Minimalist Program
“Socrates’ existence is irony … he is continually just touching the ground, but since
the real kingdom of ideality is still foreign to him, he has not as yet emigrated to it but
seems always to be on the point of departure. Irony oscillates between the ideal I and
the empirical I; the one would make Socrates a philosopher, the other a Sophist.”
Kierkegaard, “The Concept of Irony”
“We seem forced to the conclusion that a not insignificant part of our field is laboring
under the manufacture of consent.”
Lappin, Levine, and Johnson, “The Structure of Unscientific Revolutions”
Introduction
With later-EST less popular among generative grammarians than the Aspects
program or even the “Remarks” framework — and an embarrassment of counterevidence
to the models he was proposing popping up — Chomsky was playing defense in the late
1970s. While generative grammar had always been rationalized with the notion that the
evaluation of theories is more interesting than the facts in themselves, in the late
seventies Chomsky began to go further in search of a defensive rhetoric; he began to
claim that isolated empirical facts cannot, in themselves, refute theories. Recall
Chomsky’s suggestion in Essays on Form and Interpretation (1977) that “to support or
refute a proposed condition, it does not suffice to cite examples of grammatical or
ungrammatical constructions from some language, or other informant judgments or
Oenbring / 303
observed phenomena. The empirical facts do indeed bear on the correctness of a theory
of conditions on rules, but only indirectly” (21). That is to say, empirical facts are not in
and of themselves interesting; only elegant explanatory systems are interesting. Similarly,
in the late seventies, Chomsky began to make appeals to the “logically necessary” nature
of a rich Universal Grammar. Chomsky, for example, suggests in Essays that the UG that
generative grammarians describe is consists of the “’logically necessary’ or ’conceptually
necessary’ properties of language” (Essays on Form and Interpretation 2).286
Framing these ideas for a popular audience, Chomsky during later-EST
imported into linguistic theory the notion of the Galilean style of inquiry: to proceed
under the faith that a mathematically-elegant way of describing nature exists even when
most available evidence suggests that such a model is not possible or that inquiry is on
the wrong track. Chomsky, for example, claims in his 1980287 historical/philosophical
volume Rules and Representations that:
But what I am interested here is a different question: To what extent and in what
ways can inquiry in something like “the Galilean style” yield insight and
understanding of the roots of human nature in the cognitive domain? Can we hope
to move beyond superficiality by a readiness to undertake perhaps far-reaching
idealizations and to construct abstract models that are accorded more significance
than the ordinary world of sensation, and correspondingly, by readiness to tolerate
Indeed, as Seuren (2004) notes, “conceptual necessity” is “not a clear or precise notion but is,
in fact, no more than an intuition to the effect that, as far as he can see, things could not have been
otherwise” (139).
287
Although published in 1980 Rules and Representations is made up of several public lectures
Chomsky gave in the late seventies.
286
Oenbring / 304
unexplained phenomena or even as yet unexplained counterevidence to theoretical
constructions that have achieved a certain degree of explanatory adequacy depth
in some limited domain, much as Galileo did not abandon his enterprise because
he was unable to give a coherent explanation for the fact that objects do not fly off
the earth’s surface? (9-10)
By claiming that inquiry into human languages must, for the time being, proceed under
the “Galilean style,” a concept that he borrows from physicist Stephen Weinberg and
traces back to Husserl, Chomsky draws upon the authority of one of the founding fathers
of modern science: Galileo. What’s more, Chomsky makes it appear that to do otherwise
than proceed without blind faith that the project is getting somewhere is to give up on the
project of knowledge-building, clearly a powerful appeal.
While Chomsky developed the notions of the “Galilean style” and “logical
necessity” in the late 1970s, he only used those notions in a short-lived manner at the
time; they were not the central pillars of his theories at the time. What’s more, he did not
make them central elements of the rhetoric of the GB/ P and P revolution. Rather than
invoking Galileo, Chomsky spoke, as I have noted, of Plato’s Problem to support the
GB/P and P revolution. However, Chomsky has recently resurrected these notions, using
them as central pillars of his most recent would-be methodological revolution: The
Minimalist Program.
In this chapter, I begin with an overview of several of the unique features of the
Minimalist Program and its rhetoric. I then analyze several the historical precursors of
the rhetoric of the Minimalist Program, both within Chomsky’s own work and across the
Oenbring / 305
history of the study of language.
As I do in chapters two and three, I then provide an
overview of the rhetorical maneuvers that Chomsky partook in the historical development
of this most recent program. Next I overview the reception of Chomsky’s Minimalist
Program, both among his followers and his critics, with the goal of providing some
insight into how Chomsky’s theories quickly achieved dominance in established
intellectual communities. I then end this chapter and this study with return to an explicit
focus on Chomsky’s rhetoric, with a broad analysis of his rhetoric both specific to the
Minimalist Program and throughout his career. Ending with the Minimalist Program is
appropriate not only because it is the most recent program Chomsky has attempted to
sponsor, but also because Chomsky’s arguments have become more ambiguously realist
under the Minimalist Program. That is to say, Chomsky’s revolutions may finally be
withering; he is finally ceding some ground, at least implicitly, to rhetoric.
Although a thorough overview of all the lines of inquiry that have been
spawned by Chomsky and other generative scholars is outside the scope of this study, I
shall here give a brief overview of the salient rhetorical and methodological elements of
MP. For more developed yet still accessible analyzes of Chomsky’s project in the
Minimalist Program, I recommend Seuren (2004) and Berwick (1998). What I attempt to
present in this section is a distillation of MP as it is manifested in both supporters of MP,
including Chomsky, and in critics of the program. One should, however, always keep in
mind that insofar as MP is an intelligible system, this is due to Chomsky’s own rhetorical
work. Indeed, one of Chomsky’s central rhetorical feats in moving generative grammar to
the Minimalist Program has been, as with his previous revolutions, articulating — and
Oenbring / 306
presenting as a distinct and coherent whole — the core claims of the program, and having
those claims adopted widely by generative grammarians and the broader community of
linguists.
Overview of the Minimalist Program
As I note in the previous chapter, the central claims of the Minimalist Program
are Chomsky’s emphasis on the perfection of human language and his desire to treat
human languages like natural, not biological, systems. For example, in his 1998 essay
“Minimalist Inquiries: The Framework,” Chomsky asks “How close does language come
to what some super-engineer would construct, given the conditions that the language
faculty must satisfy? How ‘perfect’ is language, to put it picturesquely?” (5). Chomsky
then answers his question, suggesting that we have “reason to believe that the answer is
‘surprisingly perfect’” (5). The attendant other core claim of the MP is that linguists
should look for the simplest, most economical theories to describe human language; this
is because human syntax, apparently, is “surprisingly perfect.”
Broadly stated, MP takes one of the boldest assumptions of generative grammar
— namely the well-formed nature of natural languages — and pushes it to its logical
conclusion. More technically stated, MP proceeds under the assumption that languages
are perfectly-formed machines for interfacing with the A-P (Articulatory-Perceptual) and
the C-I (Conceptual-Intentional) systems. The levels that interface with the A-P and C-I
systems are Phonetic Form (PF) (basically the current incarnation of what used to be
called surface structure) and Logical Form (LF) (basically the current version of deep
Oenbring / 307
structure) respectively. These divides have been labeled central elements of Chomsky’s
most recent program in both critiques (see, for example, Johnson and Lappin 1999) and
in work supporting the Minimalist Program. Hendrick, for example, notes that MP
“places a significant explanatory burden on how syntax facilitates, and perhaps even
optimizes, the interpretation of interfacing cognitive systems” (Hendrick 3). More
technically stated, under MP a derivation (the current word for a string of syntax) must
“converge” at its interface levels LF and PF. If it cannot do this, the derivation crashes.
Another distinction that Chomsky and others claim to exist is that whereas
GB/P and P was representational, MP is derivational. By representational generative
theorists mean that emphasis is placed on the different levels of representation ([e.g., DStructure, S-Structure, LF, and PF]) and the interaction of the different modules of
language (e.g., binding theory, θ-theory, Case theory, etc.) at those different levels of
representation. Conversely, by suggesting MP to be derivational, generative theorists
place less emphasis on the different levels of representation, with well-formedness
constraints applying only to the fully-formed syntactic string/derivation at a limited
number of levels of representation (merely LF and PF in Chomsky [1995]). Thus,
economy constraints in Chomsky’s purest version of MP are said to be global rather than
local (for more, see Johnson and Lappin 13).
Before the complete derivation can interface with LF or PF, the derivation is
built by the operations Merge and Move in a bottom-up (see, Chomsky [2006]) manner.
Merge and Move form the backbone of the technical machinery of MP as promoted by
Chomsky. The fact that mechanisms for building derivations in the MP are claimed to
Oenbring / 308
rely upon fewer distinct operations may appear to make the whole system simpler.
Chomsky argues that Move takes place as a “last resort,” a proposition that leads to a
simplicity claim.288 However, as always, the empirical motivation for this machinery
seems lacking. (In fact, claiming that he is simplifying the machinery of the whole system
by suggesting that all theories of movement can be collapsed into unified mechanism is a
rhetorical tack that Chomsky has tried before, with the notion of Move α in the extended
standard theory.)
Generative grammarians have always had a problem with confusing formalism
with explanation, and MP continues in this tradition. Critiquing Chomsky’s theories in
the seventies, Givón warns us in his On Understanding Grammar that formalism cannot
be conflated with explanation, arguing that “being only a formal summary of the raw
facts, a formal model cannot ‘make empirical claims,’ since this would … amount to a
tautology” (6). Critiquing the Minimalist Program specifically, Seuren (2004) claims
that “despite its overall realist stance, the MP shows features of extreme formalism, in the
sense that the formalism, once established, is made to prevail over available
(counter)evidence” (118). That is to say, although Chomsky has always seemed to place
evidence-massaging and theory-building before broad empirical support, the Minimalist
Program takes a more extreme form of this commitment.
MP is, indeed, the most theory-internal, abstract, and most inaccessible to
outsiders of all the programs of research Chomsky has proposed. Lappin, Levine, and
For example, Chomsky (1995) claims that “the principle of economy of derivation requires
that computational operations must be driven by some condition on representations, as a ‘last
resort’ to overcome a failure to meet such a condition” (28).
288
Oenbring / 309
Johnson claim, for example, in their 2000 review piece “The Structure of Unscientific
Revolutions” that “MP looks like an awkward transcendental deduction of Universal
Grammar” (666). That is to say, Chomsky’s Minimalist Program is similar in form to
previous programs that Chomsky has proposed and is similarly lacking in empirical
motivation, but, due to the time that the central theoretical constructs have been on the
scene (e.g., a divide between a level of sound and a level of meaning and the notion of
universal grammar), Chomsky can support these central theoretical constructs by appeals
to their logical necessity.
Indeed, at times, what Chomsky seems to be calling for is
more massaging and reformulation of theories than genuine evidence-based inquiry. This
has led many scholars to charge that the path that Chomsky is leading linguists down has
more to with engineering than science (engineering minus useful technologies that is).
Johnson and Lappin claim, for example, that Chomsky’s notion that language is a perfect
system is “essentially an engineering notion” (Johnson and Lappin 1999: 125) that has
nothing to do with biological systems.289
Nevertheless, Chomsky routinely claims the Minimalist Program it is a
“program, not a theory” (1998: 5). By this, Chomsky means that MP is a set of theoretical
and methodological commitments (e.g., ‘economy’) rather than a putative explanatory
theory of language in and of itself. What’s more, “there are minimalist questions, but no
minimalist answers, apart from those found in pursuing the program” (1998: 5). That is
to say, the ‘answers’ given by inquiry in the Minimalist Program will always already be
theory-laden. Indeed, at several points in work under the Minimalist Program, Chomsky
289
Indeed, Chomsky even characterizes the Minimalist Program as studying language from the
vantage point of “superbly-competent engineer.”
Oenbring / 310
admits confusion with his own theoretical constructs. Chomsky, for example, claims in
“Economy of Derivation” that “exactly how these principles of interaction among levels
should be understood is not entirely clear” (Economy of Derivation 132). 290
Terminology in the Minimalist Program
As he often has when introducing a new program for generative grammar,
Chomsky has introduced a host of new points of identity / god-terms along with the MP.
Some of the most important of these new terms I have already touched upon, including:
the derivational / representational dichotomy; the notions as the C-I and A-P interfaces
(the latter more recently renamed the S-M [Sensory-Motor] interface); and the notion of
methodological naturalism. Other points of identity that Chomsky has promoted under
the MP include: the faculty of language or, depending on the publication, the language
faculty (Chomsky’s most current term[s] for describing what he has previously referred to
as universal grammar and/or the language organ); Language Acquisition Device
(something Chomsky admits is just another name for these same terms); discrete infinity;
optimality, a broader movement and trend in linguistics that Chomsky has promoted his
own distinct version of; and, most recently, the notion of biolinguistics, a term
reasserting generative linguistics’ claim to be grounded in language as biology.
As has been widely noted, highly theoretical lines of inquiry that take place on a
level of abstraction pushing the limits of comprehension of the human mind often rely
heavily on metaphorical and figurative language. The clearest case of this is theoretical
What’s more, theoretical constructs that do not seem necessary Chomsky often speaks of as
“imperfections” rather than theories.
290
Oenbring / 311
and particle physics (see, for example, Stahl’s “Physics as Metaphor”). For example, just
to limit ourselves to the notion of quarks — itself a term borrowed from Joyce’s
Finnegans Wake — we find all of the following concepts and terms at use in scholarly
discourse: gluons (the things that ‘glue’ quarks together); charm; color, beauty, and even
truth.
With the program taking a turn for the theory-internal, many of the notions that
Chomsky has sponsored in MP seem to have taken a similar turn for the metaphorical.
Following Chomsky (1993), one of the major theoretical notions used by MP generative
grammarians is the notion of “greediness” of movements in derivations (see, for example,
Martin in Working Minimalism). For example, Chomsky (1993) proposes the notions
“Procrastinate” (200), “Last Resort” (200), and “Greed” (201). There Chomsky notes
that “Last Resort, then, is always ‘self-serving’: benefiting other elements is not allowed”
(201). Chomsky continues, “alongside Procrastinate, then we have the principle of
Greed: self-serving Last Resort.” (Whereas the metaphors of Government and Binding
are totalitarian, the metaphors of MP are individualist/libertarian.) Nonetheless, Chomsky
denies the metaphorical nature of these terms. Chomsky, for example, claims in The
Architecture of Language that “‘procrastinate’ is a kind of semi-joke to keep things
picturesque and intelligible. Same with ‘greed’. I don’t think the choice of terms means
anything” (65).
Acknowledged or not, metaphorical terminology has become more common
within generative discourse under MP. Just to look at a small part of Chomsky’s 1993
essay “A Minimalist Program,” we see Chomsky using extensive metaphorical language.
Oenbring / 312
In a small section of the essay, Chomsky argues that “case features appear at PF, but must
be ‘visible’ at LF” (197). Similarly, “’strong’ features are visible at PF and ‘weak’
features are invisible at PF” (198).
With Chomsky himself putting his metaphorical terminology in scare quotes,
commentaries on the Minimalist Program have to use Chomsky’s specific phrasing in
order to explain Chomsky’s claims. Frequently using the construction something ‘is said
to’ to describe the commitments of the Minimalist Program, Seuren (2004) notes that
“the operations Select and Merge are said to be ‘conceptually necessary’ — hence,
‘costless’ in terms of the economy metric invoked for selecting the optimal derivation
from a set of alternatives” (34). Accordingly, commentaries on Chomsky’s Minimalist
Program often rely heavily on Chomsky’s specific wording, and have become more
textual commentary than assessments of a method believed to exist outside of its
manifestations in texts; analyses of MP are often more close readings of Chomsky’s texts
than analyses of methods.
A New Rhetorical Tack?
Despite the fact that generative grammar under MP remains as byzantine as
ever, the overarching rhetoric of the Minimalist Program is, I must again emphasize,
simplicity. While Chomsky and his followers maintain the point of identity that MP
simplifies the elaborate machinery of GB/P and P, the specific machinery of MP appears
only tenuously inspired by minimalist commitments. Indeed, Seuren (2004) claims that:
Oenbring / 313
the minimalist principles and assumptions are accompanied by a large amount of
grammatical machinery said to follow from them. The fact that the grammatical
machinery does not follow from the minimalist principles and assumptions calls
into question not only the grammatical machinery itself but also the MP as a
whole … The Minimalist Program is full of promises, but there is no collateral.
In the end, one is left with a story that is partly an incoherent fantasy … and partly
a repetition of old principles and methods (Seuren 2004: 14)
Nevertheless, Chomsky seems committed, at least rhetorically, to the belief that MP
simplifies the program of generative grammar. While MP makes claims to simplify the
elaborate machinery of GB/P and P, it does so only by making the machinery more
complicated in certain places. Indeed, MP, as all the programs of generative grammar
Chomsky has sponsored is not a logically-coherent set of propositions. Rather, MP, like
all previous programs that Chomsky has sponsored is merely a new set of specific
machinery and broad commitments held together by Chomsky’s authority and name.
Although Chomsky and his followers have done their best to frame the
Minimalist Program a something totally new (Freidin, for example, suggests that MP is a
“a major breakthrough … to a new level of abstraction” [1997: 214, cited in Seuren 2004:
11]), the concerns and the rhetoric of the Minimalist Program are by no means new
within the history of linguistics — or even within Chomsky’s own project. As I have
noted, Chomsky’s appeals to “Galilean style” and the “logically necessary” nature of UG
are strategies that he developed in the late seventies, but he has made more prominent in
Oenbring / 314
recent work. Instead, these concerns are framed as new within the revolutionary rhetoric
of the MP; they are the new god-terms of the current program.
While Chomsky and his followers would like you to believe that his interest in
notions of economy developed suddenly in a late-eighties, early-nineties epiphany, the
notion of economy, a central pillar of the Minimalist Program, is merely a newly-adopted
rhetorical pillar — not a new concern — for Chomsky. In fact, one can trace appeals to
notions of economy back to some of Chomsky’s earliest work; it was a notion Chomsky
received from Harris and analytic philosophers like Goodman. Chomsky suggests, for
example, in his 1951 M.A. essay The Morphophonemics of Modern Hebrew that “the
grammar must be designed in such a way as to be the most efficient, economical, and
elegant device” (3). Neither is the young Chomsky the originator of interest in notions of
economy; analytic philosophers made appeals to notions of economy, their own version
of Ockham’s razor, well before Chomsky’s appearance.291
What’s more, Chomsky and his followers claims under MP that syntactic strings
behave more like physical laws of nature than the objects of biological systems has
precursors in the history of linguistics, particularly among 19th Century German historical
linguists. For example, starting around the time of Jacob Grimm’s impressive empirical
achievements in postulating a series of rules for the development of proto-Germanic out
of proto-Indoeuropean, scholars spoke openly of sound laws (“Lautgesetze”), despite the
291
In fact, one of the primary exponents of the notion of economy was Nelson Goodman, one of
Chomsky’s instructors at Penn. Indeed, Goodman’s essay “On the Simplicity of Ideas,” a text
that claims that “the motives for seeking economy in the basis of a system are much the same as
the motives for constructing the system itself” (107), is one of only five sources of Chomsky’s
Morphophonemics.
Oenbring / 315
fact Grimm’s sound change ‘laws’ were, in fact, historical reconstructions, not immutable
laws of nature. Later in the century linguists, including most famously August
Schleicher, would suggest that human languages are themselves organisms in nature;
languages, these linguists claimed, are natural systems, natural systems living outside of
human biology.
But the most radical rhetorical tack reminiscent of the Minimalist Program
taken by 19th Century German linguists was, however, the claims of the so-called neoGrammarians (e.g., Brugman and Osthoff). The organizing point of identity for these
neo-Grammarians was that sound change takes place according to immutable laws of
nature which are “exceptionless” (Brugman and Osthoff, cited in Collinge 205) and take
place with “a blind and inescapable necessity” (Osthoff, cited in Collinge 205).292 These
claims were made in order to distinguish their work as more scientific than early
historical studies of language, which were dismissed as “’grey theories,’ ‘voyaging with
no compass,’ or ‘paper linguistics’” (Collinge 205). The neo-grammarians made these
claims for the purposes of identity building and boundary maintenance. This rhetorical
posture is similar to generative grammar, particularly so under the Minimalist Program,
in several ways. For one, it treats languages as physical objects of nature that occur
according to immutable physical laws. What’s more, both neo-grammarian doctrine and
MP proceed under the assumption that language must act in the way they believe it acts
out of logical necessity; they both appear as transcendental deductions of the researchers’
core commitments.
292
For all quotes from Brugmann and Osthoff, see Schneider (1973: 19-53).
Oenbring / 316
Rhetorical Development of the Minimalist Program
As with Chomsky’s other programs, there is no clear beginning to the Minimalist
Program. Although Chomsky’s 1986 book Barriers is usually viewed as a major piece of
GB/P and P, in historical perspective, the book should properly be understood as
containing the earliest inkling of what would eventually become Chomsky’s most recent
program, as one of the major concerns of the book is the “Minimality Condition” (e.g.,
10, 12, 42): basically, that for a governor to be a governor it must be the ‘closest
governor’ to the object it governs (i.e., in one of his less technical explications, Chomsky
suggests that ‘α does not govern β … if there is a “closer governor’” [10]). Two years
later in 1988, Chomsky released the important manuscript “Some Notes on Economy of
Derivation and Representation,” a piece first published in Freidin’s 1991 edited volume
Principles and Parameters in Comparative Grammar.293
Inspired by Barriers and “Some Notes on Economy,” Chomsky’s follower and
collaborator Rizzi first made minimalism a central element of generative inquiry in his
1990 study Relativized Minimality. Note that it was Rizzi, not Chomsky, that began to
treat the notion of minimalism as a god-term. Although less clearly a good-cop bad-cop
ploy than Lees’ review of Syntactic Structures, Relativized Minimality, with a specific
focus on the Minimality Principle, did much to begin institutionalizing minimalism as a
While “Some Notes on Economy” would provide much of the backbone of what eventually
would be the Minimalist Program, it is important to remember that the Minimalist Program did
not exist yet. Indeed, like Barriers, “Some Notes on Economy” does not speak of the existence of
a Minimalist Program. “Some Notes on Economy” does, however, speak of “Minimizing
Derivations” and “least effort” (426), terms that take on a major role later in the essay.
293
Oenbring / 317
major concern of generative theorists. It is, however, interesting to note that Chomsky’s
Minimality Condition and Rizzi’s Minimality Principle are technical interactions among
models in trees rather than broad methodological commitments. Like the GB/P and P
revolution, which began by foregrounding the technical notions of government and
binding before moving to the broader notions of principles and parameters, MP began by
using minimalism as a tight methodological notion rather than a broad conceptual godterm / point of identity.
Recall that Chomsky framed the move to the GB/P and P approach, as a
movement to a new order of abstraction focusing on general principles rather than
specifically-formulated rule systems. Accordingly, Chomsky begins “Some Notes on
Economy” with invoking Principles and Parameters as a landmark; he presents the
analysis he presents in the piece as a development of, not a movement beyond, GB/P and
P. Emphasizing the revolutionary nature of the GB/P and P approach, Chomsky claims at
the beginning of “Some Notes on Economy” that:
The past few years have seen the development of an approach to the study of
language that constitutes a fairly radical departure from the historical tradition,
more than contemporary generative grammar at its origins. I am referring to the
principles-and-parameters (P&P) approach, which questions the assumption that a
particular language is, in essence, a specific rule system. (417)
As this quote intimates, in “Some Notes on Economy,” Chomsky begins to unveil MP by
the emphasizing the revolutionary advancements in the theory of generative grammar that
occurred through GB/P and P’s emphasis on treating language according to the
Oenbring / 318
interaction of broader principles rather than as specifically formulated rule systems, a
notion that would become more developed under MP.294 Indeed, like with other
programs, at the beginning of the Minimalist Program, Chomsky claimed continuity with
the previous program before he later claimed rupture. Toward the end of “Some Notes on
Economy,” Chomsky suggests that “least effort” may be a goal of future generative
theorizing, claiming that “we may hope to raise these ‘least effort’ guidelines to general
principles of UG” (447).295
Chomsky finally claims the advent of the MP in the title of his 1993 essay “A
Minimalist Program for Linguistic Theory,” originally published in Hale and Keyser’s
edited volume The View from Building 20. Note that the title itself of the piece does the
“proposing” of the system, and Chomsky’s invocations on the notion of the Minimalist
Program in the piece can merely assume its existence; he need not directly propose it.
Indeed, Chomsky’s specific phrasing when he first speaks of the notion of a Minimalist
Program in the piece is that “a particularly simple design for language would take the
(conceptually necessary) interface levels to be the only levels. That assumption will be
part of the ‘minimalist’ program I would like to explore here” (169). (Indeed, Chomsky
Chomsky’s 1991 essay with Lasnik “The Theory of Principles and Parameters” first published
in the volume Syntax: An International Handbook of Contemporary Research, similarly frames
the theories presented as a development within the Principles and Parameters approach. As in
other essays, the goal of the early section of the piece seems to be to invoke and surround the
reader in Chomsky’s quintessential terminology and points of identity. Indeed, Chomsky and
Lasnik invoke all of the following concepts in the first three pages: grammar, Universal
Grammar, competence/performance, infinite use of finite means, I-language.
295
At the same time, however, Chomsky emphasizes that his emphasis on notions of “least effort”
does not mean he is endorsing the claim that language is designed to do things in the world. In
fact, Chomsky claims that “language design … appears to be in many respects ‘dysfunctional,’
yielding properties that are not well adapted to the functions language is called on to perform”
(448). However, Chomsky assures us that “there is no real paradox here” (448).
294
Oenbring / 319
invokes the conceptually necessary nature of a rich universal grammar several times in
the piece.) Like in previous essays, Chomsky construes the move toward MP as a
fulfillment of GB/P and P, arguing that “the more recent principles-and-parameters
(P&P) approach, assumed here, breaks radically with this tradition, taking steps toward
the minimalist design just sketched” (170).
Following the rhetorical trick of Studies on Semantics in Generative Grammar
(1972), Chomsky’s 1995 volume The Minimalist Program brings “Some Notes on
Economy,” “The Theory of Principles and Parameters,” and “A Minimalist Program”
together in a single rhetorical volley designed to foment a new saltation and or paradigm
shift for the theory. This is despite the fact that the different chapters in the book,
produced at different points, contradict one another at many points.296 (Indeed, although
chapters one through three of the book use the layers of D-Structure and S-Structure in
addition to LF and PF, chapter four dumps both former two from the model.) While most
of the material of the book is these three republished essays, the volume includes a totally
new (and substantial) fourth chapter “Categories and Transformations” as well as a new
introduction.
On the first page of the introduction of The Minimalist Program, Chomsky asserts
what have come to be seen as the unique claims of the Minimalist Program; from the
beginning of the piece, Chomsky makes clear what he sees to be the new main features of
his new theory. Specifically, Chomsky states that:
Indeed, as Seuren (2004) notes, the different chapters “reflect different positions with regard to
some of the central issues in the book. Chapter 4 of the book dismisses most of what is said in the
first three chapters” (20).
296
Oenbring / 320
This work is motivated by two related questions: (1) what are the general
conditions that the human language faculty should be expected to satisfy? And (2)
to what extent is the language faculty determined by these conditions, without
special structure that lies beyond them? … To the extent that the answer to
question (2) is positive, language is something like a “perfect system,” meeting
external constraints as well as can be done, in one of the reasonable ways. The
Minimalist Program for linguistic theory seeks to explore these possibilities. (The
Minimalist Program 1)
Like the book as a whole, the new chapter “Categories and Transformations,” begins with
a statement of the unique features of MP; one of Chomsky’s main goals in the piece is to
make clear exactly what the propositions of this new program that he’s unveiling are —
and to make clear that there is a new program. In addition to dumping D-Structure and SStructure from the theory, Chomsky endorses a more basic form of x-bar theory in
“Categories,” arguing that “standard X-bar theory is thus largely eliminated in favor of
bare essentials” (246). What’s left is what Chomsky calls “bare phrase structure” (249).
After the publication of The Minimalist Program, Chomsky worked to solidify his
new revolution in his 1998 essay “Minimalist Inquiries: The Framework,” eventually
published in the edited volume Step by Step (2000). Like Lectures on Government and
Binding, “Minimalist Inquiries” early on pairs a claim of “collective effort” with a claim
of individual authorship; the claims that he presents are legitimated both on the basis of
his authority and on the basis of the broad consensus of the scholarly community (89).
Like other works published right after foundational tomes of new theories (e.g., 1982’s
Oenbring / 321
Some Concepts and Consequences of the Theory of Government and Binding), the
primary task of “Minimalist Inquiries” is to articulate in a clear way the core claims of
the previous text.
With “Minimalist Inquiries,” Chomsky starts to make his 1995 book the core
landmark in his brief genealogies of the generative grammar. Chomsky claims at the
beginning of “Minimalist Inquiries” that:
The remarks that follow are ‘inquiries,’ a term intended to stress their tentative
character. They are “minimalist” in the sense of the “Minimalist Program,” itself
explanatory as the term indicates, and its short career already developing in
partially conflicting and attractive directions … Here, I will keep to general
considerations, rethinking the issues that motivate the program and attempting to
give a clearer account and further development from one point of view, taking as
a starting point the final sections of Chomsky 1995b (henceforth MP).
What’s more, in his 1999 paper “Derivation by Phase,” published in 2001 in the volume
Ken Hale: A Life in Language, Chomsky adds “Minimalist Inquiries” as a primary
landmark in the history of the theory, claiming that “what follows extends and revises an
earlier paper (“Minimalist Inquiries,” MI), which outlines a framework for pursuit of the
so-called ‘minimalist program’” (1).
While in the nineties Chomsky claimed the notions LF and PF to be core
elements of the Minimalist Program, he has, however, renamed these notions in his most
recent publications; LF is now extricated from the model and has been replace by another
dichotomy between distinct levels: the divide between SEM and PHON, or the
Oenbring / 322
derivations that map to the two interfaces (that Chomsky previously labeled π and λ).
Chomsky claims in his 2004 article “Beyond Explanatory Adequacy” that “there is no
LF: rather, the computation maps LA to <PHON, SEM> piece by piece, cyclically.
There are, therefore, no LF properties and no interpretation of LF, strictly speaking,
though Σ and Φ interpret units that are part of something like LF in a noncyclic
conception” (107). Like always, it is unclear what these new labels add to the model
other than the appearance of novelty or progress in the theory. Nonetheless, we should
not underestimate the enduring rhetorical power of Chomsky’s ever-shifting yet neat
dichotomies between levels. That is to say, what Botha has called the generative garden
game appears to be alive and well.
The Reception of the Minimalist Program
As in the past, many of Chomsky’s most ardent supporters (many of them his
former graduate students) quickly and wholeheartedly embraced the core principles of the
Minimalist Program. As I have noted, Rizzi’s Relativized Minimality did much to
establish minimalism and economy as god-terms. After Chomsky’s 1995 book The
Minimalist Program, supporters began to fall in line under the banner of the new set of
organizing principles. Zwart’s 1998 review of Chomsky’s 1995 volume is typical in its
hyperbole, claiming Chomsky’s book to be “a masterpiece” (Zwart 1998: 214, cited in
Seuren 2004: 11). Even more modest assessments of Chomsky’s 1995 work often include
hyperbolic claims designed to place the text at the core of generative inquiry. Brody’s
somewhat critical, but still partisan assessment of The Minimalist Program, argues, for
Oenbring / 323
example, that the volume “powerfully integrates several strands of research into an
exciting and intellectually seductive novel view of the field” (205).
Following the master’s lead, many works by Chomsky’s followers under MP
include quotes from important figures in the history of science claiming something like
an Ockham’s razor argument: that in science the simplest theory is the best theory.
Epstein and Seeley, for example, claim in Derivations in Minimalism (2006) that “we
include this discussion simply to identify our (undoubtedly unachieved but ultimate) goal,
what Einstein (1954: 282) called ‘the grand aim of all science’: … which is to cover the
greatest possible number of empirical facts by logical deduction from the smallest
possible number or hypotheses or axioms” (3). In using a decontextualized quote from
one of the most famous scientists in history as support for the concerns of the current
program of generative grammar, Epstein and Seeley are clearly borrowing a rhetorical
trick from Chomsky.
After the publication of The Minimalist Program, many supporters have
wholeheartedly adopted Chomsky landmarks for the theory as presented in “Minimalist
Inquiries” and other works. Wildner, Gärtener, and Bierswich claim at the beginning of
their The Role of Economy Principles in Linguistic Theory that:
Generative linguistics, it is fair to say, is dominated by developments in syntactic
theory; and for the past few years, work in generative syntax has been heavily
influenced by what has come to be known as ‘the Minimalist Program’ (MP).
The seminal paper that ushered in the MP was Chomsky’s “A minimalist program
for linguistic theory” (1993) … At the core of the MP lies the idea that economy
Oenbring / 324
is a central property of the system of language. This is fleshed out in terms of
concrete principles of UG that instantiate the overarching economy idea. (1)
Similarly, Chomsky’s followers have followed the points of identity proposed in
Chomsky’s work. For example, Di Sciullo’s edited volume UG and the External
Systems invokes the notion of external systems in its title, both drawing on Chomsky’s
works for its relevance and affirming the importance of notions of externals systems
under UG. While few of the pieces deal explicitly with the notion of external systems, the
volume establishes its relevance by invoking Chomsky’s current concerns.
The Minimalist Program has, however, not led to as widespread assent as
Chomsky’s previous putative scientific revolutions. Generative grammarians of various
stripes have been concerned about several different elements of Chomsky’s theorizing
under MP, including: the perfection claim; his increasingly cavalier attitude regarding
evidence; and, as I note in the previous chapter, Chomsky’s ideas about evolution. MP
critic Newmeyer notes that Chomsky’s ideas regarding evolution lead to a substantial
rhetorical problem for generative linguists in the presentation of their theory.
Specifically, Newmeyer (1998) claims that “one must concede that the absence of even
the rudiments of an answer to this question [of evolution] has conferred a rhetorical
advantage on those opposing the idea of an innate UG” (305).297
297
However, the biggest flare up to date over the status of MP among generative linguists was a
2000-2001 review article spat in the journal Natural Language and Linguistic Theory. On one
side of the flare up stood Lappin, Levine, and Johnson (LLJ), a group that offered first a critique
of Chomsky’s MP, and later a series responses to their critics. LLJ note in their original piece, the
title invoking Kuhn, “The Structure of Unscientific Revolutions” that:
Vagueness and imprecision are not exactly unknown in much of the history of linguistic
theorizing. Taken in isolation the conceptual defects of the derivational economy notion are
probably no worse in kind than earlier examples might be. What is altogether mysterious from a
Oenbring / 325
The Autonomy Thesis and the Enduring Rhetorical Power of Dichotomies
As Randy Harris notes, Chomsky’s original notion of deep structure “was a …
compelling masterstroke” (“Assent, Dissent and Rhetoric in Science” 18) in that it
succeeded in captivating the imagination of both linguists and non-linguists. However,
Chomsky has since repudiated it for causing “confusion … at the periphery of the field,”
(Language and Responsibility, cited in Harris 18). Like every previous program since the
Current Issues era, however, MP proposes divides between hypothesized levels relating
to meaning and other levels relating to sound — divides that seem to serve as the
lynchpins of the program (e.g., LF / PF and A-P / C-I). As always, these divides are
seemingly lacking empirical motivation and are clearly ideological. Indeed, despite the
fact that Chomsky recognizes that the deep structure / surfaces structure divide is
problematical, he still makes similar notions the core elements of his theory. If Chomsky
includes dichotomies that he himself recognizes are clearly oversimplifications, his
reasons must be rhetorical (or at bare minimum heuristic).
purely scientific point of view is the rapidity with which a substantial number of investigators,
who had significant research commitments in the Government-Binding framework, have
abandoned that framework and much of its conceptual inventory, virtually overnight. (667)
As this quote suggests, one of the primary concerns of LLJ’s piece is how and why so many
researchers would discard old theory in favor of the new theory, a theory that is by no means any
more empirically adequate, seemingly overnight. LLJ are equally concerned with the proliferation
of mendacious metaphors from the physical sciences within MP advocacy, focusing in particular
on Uriagereka’s Rhyme and Reason. After LLJ’s original piece, a number of proud exponents of
the Minimalist Program, including Uriagereka and Piattelli-Palmarini, issued responses, often
focusing on LLJ’s lack of acknowledgement of dissent from Chomsky in the field, all while
rearticulating first principles supporting MP.
Oenbring / 326
Recall that Chomsky has long claimed that broader principles of cognition and
biology (e.g., perception and the physiology of articulation) should not play a role in
linguistics as those concepts are too imprecise to the rigorously formulated. Moreover,
Chomsky has long claimed that the discipline of psychology has little to add to the
discipline of linguistics (this is despite mentalism’s places as a guarded point of identity
for linguistics). As psychological (i.e., physiological) evidence is not admissible, this,
according to Chomsky, builds the raison d’être for linguistics as an autonomous science.
The prominent place given to the C-I (Conceptual-Intentional) and A-P (ArticulatoryPerceptual [now renamed S-M, or Sensory-Motor]) interfaces under MP would, however,
seem to constitute a disavowal of the autonomy thesis; one might read Chomsky’s
concern with such levels as an acknowledgment of the place that these broader cognitive
and biological notions play within linguistics. Nonetheless, Chomsky is having his
broader principles of biology on his own terms: they manifest themselves in Chomsky’s
rhetoric couched in the form of a neat dichotomy between idealized levels. What’s more,
these interfaces are the external boundaries of generative inquiry; they are goals of
generative descriptions, not parts of its core machinery.
Furthermore, as I note in the previous chapter, the fact that one of Chomsky’s
most recent publications is with two psychologists (e.g., his recent 2002 article in Science
with psychologists Hauser and Fitch “The Faculty of Language”) would seem to suggest
that Chomsky is ceding ground to broader principles of cognition and biology. However,
upon closer examination this appears not to be the case. In fact, the main purpose of the
article is to propose yet another idealized dichotomy between levels. The piece divides
Oenbring / 327
between a broader, yet idealized category of the FLB (the faculty of language — broad
sense) of which the C-I and S-M interfaces are subcomponents, and the FLN (the faculty
of language — narrow sense), an element that’s sole feature is recursion (read: syntax).
That is to say, Chomsky, Hauser, and Fitch keep syntax as an autonomous system, all
while framing their piece as an intervention in broader biological discourse, by drawing a
dichotomy between an idealized system of syntax and broader biological principles.
Indeed, the rhetorical value of the FLN / FLB dichotomy for Chomsky is clear: Chomsky
can have his biology and his touch of God at the same time.
The Present: A Return to Rhetoric?
If the existent is the same as the nonexistent, it is not possible for both to exist. For if
both exist, they are not the same, and if the same, both do not exist. To which the
conclusion follows that nothing exists. For if neither the existent exists nor the
nonexistent nor both, and if no additional possibility is conceivable, nothing exists.
Gorgias, “On Nonexistence”
Much as seminal analytic philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein took a turn near the
end of his life toward considering how the specific language practices of specific areas of
practice, including philosophical inquiry, bewitch specific the practice of life in all
areas298 — a turn that led to the development of a more self-reflexive brand of
philosophical inquiry, what has been called ‘therapeutic philosophy’ in meta-discourse
298
See Wittgenstein’s posthumously published Philosophical Investigations.
Oenbring / 328
surrounding Wittgenstein’s work — so has Chomsky under the Minimalist Program
made nods toward self-reflective analysis of the specific methods that generative
grammarians use, all while hedging many of his realist claims. While Chomsky, like
Wittgenstein before him, have both at the end of their careers apparently ceded some
grounds to notions of rhetoric, Chomsky has not gone near as far as the later
Wittgenstein.
Echoing discourse surrounding Wittgenstein’s later work, in the fourth chapter of
The Minimalist Program, Chomsky speaks of the “therapeutic value” (233) of the
Minimalist Program, noting that “it is all too easy to succumb to the temptation to offer a
purported explanation for some phenomenon on basis of assumptions that are roughly on
the order of complexity of what is to be explained” (233). Chomsky’s phrasing is
circumspect, but at its core Chomsky seems to be acknowledging a claim that critics of
generative grammar have been making for decades: that many of its purported
descriptions offer nothing more than tautology.
While Chomsky maintains a commitment to realism, his realism has become
much more equivocal under MP. For example, despite espousing the one great mutation
theory of the evolution of UG, Chomsky admits his instantaneous evolution hypothesis is
a “fairy tale” (Architecture of Language 4).299 Indeed, Chomsky in recent years routinely
Specifically, Chomsky claims in The Architecture of Language that “to tell a fairy tale about
it, it is almost as if there was some higher primate wandering about a long time ago and some
random mutation took place, maybe after some strange cosmic ray shower, and it reorganized the
brain, implanting a language organ in an otherwise primate brain” (Architecture of Language 4).
299
Oenbring / 329
peppers his speeches on linguistics with hedges and/or anti-foundational claims.300
(Recall Chomsky’s recent claims [represented in Barsky (1997)] that he has never held
the autonomy thesis [this is probably due to the fact that the autonomy thesis, despite
300
As I have noted, Chomsky has, under the Minimalist Program, made moves to lay a new
monist foundation for generative grammar while frequently making unequivocally antifoundational statements, often in very close quarters to his monist claims. That is to say,
Chomsky has become more willing to accept under MP the idea that scholarly descriptions of
nature may be always already theory-laden.
The following long passage from On Nature and Language is somewhat cryptic, but
especially rich:
Mind-body dualism is no longer tenable, because there is no notion of body. It is
common in recent years to ridicule Descartes’ “ghost in the machine,” and to speak of
“Descartes’s error” in postulating a second substance: mind, distinct from body. It is true
that Descartes was proven wrong, but not for those reasons. Newton exorcised the
machine; he left the ghost intact. It was the first substance, extended matter, that
dissolved into mysteries. We can speak intelligibly of physical phenomena (processes,
etc.) as we speak of the real truth or the real world. For the natural sciences, there are
mental aspects of the world, along with optical, chemical, organic, and others. The
categories need not be firm or distinct, or conform to commonsense intuition, a standard
for science that was finally abandoned with Newton’s discoveries, along with the demand
for “intelligibility” as conceived by Galileo and early modern science generally. (53)
This is a particularly interesting passage for several reasons. While, as I have argued, Chomsky’s
rhetorical work under MP has attempted to position generative grammar as purging the ghost in
the machine, Chomsky, referring to Newton’s theory of action at a distance (see, for example,
The Chomsky-Foucault Debate 8), argues here that Newton, the expositor of a physical system,
Newtonian mechanics, so precise that ever since its introduction centuries ago has been the envy
of all academic fields (at least till the 20th century), “excorcised the machine” but “left the ghost
intact.” By this move Chomsky is attempting to point out that all descriptions of nature are
ultimately theory-laden and that theories of nature may never be perfectly autonomous,
intelligible, and robust.
It is, indeed, interesting that Chomsky has chosen to frame Newton’s work as supporting
anti-foundational notions, as Newtonian mechanics has generally been understood as a paragon of
methodological precision (at least till the advent of the theory of relativity). I argue that by
framing Newton’s system anti-foundationally (i.e., framing it as a theory-laden system) Chomsky
is working rhetorically to suggest the theory-laden nature of all knowledge, thereby weakening
arguments against generative grammar that have suggested it to be merely a language-game (see,
for example, Lakoff’s Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things). By arguing that all descriptions of
nature are theory-laden, even a system that it usually seen as totally robust like Newton’s,
Chomsky can weaken arguments against generative grammar that claim that it is an unfruitful
mode of inquiry. That is to say, Chomsky paints generative grammar as a language game among
many, a language game that is somewhat unique in that it is part of naturalistic inquiry.
Oenbring / 330
being an organizing idea for the community of generative grammarians, clearly isn’t true
in its purest form]).
At the same time, however, Chomsky has under MP attempted to emphasize the
fundamentally biological nature of linguists’ descriptions, promoting biolinguistics as a
point of identity for linguists in his recent speeches and writings. Indeed, biolinguistics is
a recurrent theme of Chomsky’s recent stump speeches that he gives in various forms at
talks all over the world.301 As such, Chomsky’s biolinguistic claims would seem to
constitute a renewed commitment to realism.
While increasing his anti-foundational/anti-realist claims at the same time he is
increasing his language as biology claims may seem to make the recent Chomsky
strangely Janus-faced, we might attempt to reconcile these two sets of claims by
considering an assertion that Chomsky has made several times before, but not
prominently under MP: that the shape and form of possible scientific knowledge is highly
constrained by the human genetic endowment (i.e., that scientific knowledge is limited by
what he has called the human science-forming capacity). Chomsky suggests, for
example, in Language and Problems of Knowledge the “partial congruence between the
truth about the world and what the human science-forming capacity produces at a given
moment yields science. Notice that it is just blind luck if the human science-forming
For example, Chomsky’s 2004 speech in Hungary to the Magyar Tudományos Akadémia, now
reproduced on the web, “Biolinguistics and the Human Capacity” begins as follows: “I would
like to say a few words about what has come to be called “the biolinguistic perspective,” which
began to take shape half a century ago in discussions among a few graduate students who were
much influenced by developments in biology and mathematics in the early postwar years,
including work in ethology that was just coming to be known in the United States. One of them
was Eric Lenneberg, whose seminal 1967 study Biological Foundations of Language remains a
basic document of the field” (“Biolinguistics and the Human Capacity”).
301
Oenbring / 331
capacity, a particular component of the human biological endowment, happens to yield a
result that conforms more or less to the truth about the world” (157-158). As we see in
this quote, Chomsky has claimed that the shape and form of scientific theories is severely
limited by the human genetic endowment. That is to say, the shape and form of scientific
knowledge is, ultimately, an accident of biology.
This is, for certain, a strange and slippery claim for someone putatively stalwartly
defending science and the enlightenment, as Chomsky and his followers sometimes like
to paint his work. (Recall, for example, Chomsky’s recent putative undressings of
charlatan postmodernists.) Nonetheless, Chomsky’s attempts to marshal both hedging
anti-realist notions and the alluring idea of biolinguistics during different works during
the same time period (or even during different points in the same works) should all be
recognized as strategic maneuvers: rhetoric.
Similarly, although Chomsky makes no doubt that minimalism is the thesis he
prefers, he often goes to great lengths to avoid espousing it in its purest form — as the
claims of MP are, in their strongest forms, clearly indefensible — yet another slippery
rhetorical maneuver. Chomsky, for example, acknowledges in the public discussion
presented in On Nature and Language that “if you want to know what seems to refute
the strong minimalist thesis, the answer is just about everything you can think of or pick
at random from a corpus of material” (On Nature and Language 127). That is to say, just
about everything appears to be evidence against the claim that languages are perfect
systems.
Oenbring / 332
Indeed, Chomsky consistently divides between a “Strong Minimalist Thesis” and
a less radical and more plausible “weaker version” of the theory. Chomsky, like with the
FLN / FLB divide, draws dichotomy between a perfect idealized system on the one side
and a more plausible version on the other (what we might call a dichotomy between
touch of God and touch of reality). Indeed, Chomsky continues to exploit the rhetorical
power of the dichotomy. Chomsky suggests, for example, in “Derivation by Phase” that:
The strongest minimalist thesis SMT would hold that language is an optimal
solution to such conditions. SMT, or a weaker version, becomes an empirical
thesis insofar as we are able to determine interface conditions and to clarify
notions of “good-design.” While SMT cannot be seriously entertained, there is by
now reason to believe that in nontrivial respects some such thesis holds, a
surprising conclusion insofar as it is true, with broad implications for the study of
language, and well beyond.” (3)
Although “SMT cannot be seriously entertained,” the basic notion of minimalism still,
according to Chomsky, has value. Chomsky nimbly dances around the strong minimalist
thesis in other publications too, including his 2006 manuscript “Approaching UG from
Below.” There Chomsky suggests that “one useful way to approach the problem from
below is to entertain the strong minimalist thesis SMT” (3, emphasis added). We can,
according to his idiom “formulate a SMT” for the purposes of inquiry, even if the notion
in its purest sense clearly isn’t true.
In many ways this is remarkably similar to Chomsky’s rhetorical maneuvers
around the notion of autonomous syntax in the seventies. There he suggested that “one
Oenbring / 333
might formulate a ‘thesis of autonomy of formal grammar’ of varying degrees of
strength” (Essays on Form and Interpretation 42, emphasis added). What’s more, “we
can distinguish, then, two version of an autonomy thesis: an absolute thesis, which holds
that the theory of linguistic form, including the concept, ‘formal grammar’ and all levels
apart from semantic representation, can be fully defined in terms of formal primitives,
and a weaker version, which holds that this is true only conditionally, with certain
parameters, perhaps localized in the dictionary” (42-43). In his work to defend
generative grammar, Chomsky divided between an absolute autonomy thesis, and a
weaker autonomy thesis. (Also recall his recent disavowal of the autonomy thesis.)
Interestingly, in both his recent maneuvering regarding the SMT and in his earlier
contortions regarding the notion of the autonomy of syntax, Chomsky has been able to
espouse bold theses serving to organize the community of generative grammarians all
while avoiding asserting those theses in their purist, absurdist forms. That is to say,
Chomsky offers up these theses as points of identity for the community of generative
grammarians despite recognizing that, in their purest forms these notions cannot be true.
This is a fascinating rhetorical maneuver, a maneuver that, for certain, only a scholar of
great authority could get away with. Indeed, Kierkegaard’s take on Socrates that serves as
an epigraph to this chapter seems to apply perfectly to Chomsky: his idealism is
seemingly otherworldly and yet he still somehow has a foot on the ground in ours; he is
both a philosopher and a sophist.302
302
However, a generative grammarian up on their Kierkegaard might point out that that
Kierkegaard’s next line after “the one would make Socrates a philosopher, the other a Sophist” is
Oenbring / 334
A Final Assessment: Chomsky as Rhetor
Pictorial Representation of Word Frequencies in this Dissertation
Figure 3
As his recent dealings with the notion of the Strong Minimalist Thesis
demonstrate, Chomsky has never shied away from engaging in what must be called
daring rhetorical maneuvers. Certainly promoting a thesis as a point of identity for a
group of would-be scientists while stating directly that the thesis, in its purest form, is
incorrect should properly be described as a daring rhetorical maneuver. The same goes
for Chomsky’s espousal of rationalism, a philosophical system generally decried as
metaphysical by contemporary philosophers in the fifties and sixties. And his persistent
“but what makes him more than a Sophist is that his empirical I has universal validity” (21, bold
added).
Oenbring / 335
interventions in political discussions — especially his strongly anti-Zionist positions,
given the fact that he is Jewish.
These bold rhetorical moves have, as a whole, helped Chomsky construct
ruptures of identity. That is to say, the boldness of Chomsky’s claims build the
appearance that what he is offering is something bold and totally new. Indeed, it is easy
to have the following response to Chomsky’s work: that if someone is saying something
that appears to be this radical and this bold it must be both novel and profound. That is
to say, we grant contrarians extra scope.
As I have noted, the ultimate effect of Chomsky’s work as scholar/rhetor has
since the sixties been more to change how the discipline of linguistics understands itself
than to substantively change the methods of linguistics and generative grammar; his
primary target has been the disciplinary identity of generative grammar and linguistics as
a whole. This is a style of rhetoric that he continues up to the present. Indeed, as recently
as his 2006 manuscript “Approaching UG from Below,” Chomsky has attempted to build
another putative revolution (or at least to marshal another revolutionary rhetorical frame).
Quite literally claiming that MP has turned generative grammar and the discipline of
linguistics on its head, Chomsky notes early on in “Approaching UG” that:
Throughout the modern history of generative grammar, the problem of
determining the character of FL has been approached “from top down”: How
much must be attributed to UG to account for language acquisition? The MP
seeks to approach the problem “from bottom up”: How little can be attributed to
UG while still accounting for the variety of I-languages attained, relying on third
Oenbring / 336
factor principles? The two approaches should, of course, converge, and should
interact in the course of pursuing a common goal. (3)
Of course, an (at least rhetorical) focus on using as little apparatus as possible to describe
human syntax is something that has existed in the MP for quite awhile; Chomsky’s
suggestion that the MP approaches UG from a bottom up rather than top down manner is
merely a new way to talk about MP rather than a new goal for MP. That is to say, it is a
rhetorical rather than a substantive revolution.
Chomsky’s numerous putative scientific revolutions in the study of language
have, along with his persistent political interventions, worked to build his revolutionary
ethos. This revolutionary ethos we might also call a posture of dissidence. Collectively,
Chomsky’s revolutionary ethos and posture of dissidence have served to support his
authority as guru/prophet; they have served to support Chomsky’s authority as an
individual author. (Although, as I note in my extended analysis of Saussure’s Cours in
the introduction, it is common for academic fields to read more author into texts than is
actually there, Chomsky has done much to support his own authorship cult.)
While Chomsky has relied heavily on novelty claims and the posture of
dissidence, he has also routinely invoked the authority of tradition. This emphasis on
historical precursors has been particularly common in his work aimed at general
academic audiences. In fact, Chomsky continues to spin tales that claim for generative
grammar the authority of tradition up to the present. For example, Chomsky claims at
the beginning of “Approaching UG” that “the problem that has virtually defined the
serious study of language since its ancient origins, if only implicitly, is to identify the
Oenbring / 337
specific nature of this distinctive human possession” (1). This longstanding emphasis on
the “specific nature of this distinctive human possession” Chomsky connects to the
contemporary concerns of to what he calls the biolinguistic perspective, a newfound point
of identity for linguistics that Chomsky promotes in recent pieces.
Defining generative phonology against post-Bloomfieldian ‘structuralist’
phonemics, Chomsky reads the notions of biolinguistics and economy (which though
present was not a god-term until recently) back into early generative work. Chomsky
claims, for example, in “Approaching UG” that:
Within the biolinguistic framework, methodological considerations of simplicity,
elegance, etc., can often be reframed as empirical theses concerning organic
systems generally. For example, Morris Halle’s classical argument against
postulating a linguistic level of structuralist phonemics was that it required
unmotivated redundancy of rules, taken to be a violation of natural
methodological assumptions. Similarly conclusions about ordering and cyclicity
of phonological and syntactic rule systems from the 1950s were justified on the
methodological grounds that they reduce descriptive complexity and eliminate
stipulations. (1)
As we see in this quote, Chomsky uses the notions of organic systems and biolinguistics,
a current god-term, to describe the state of generative inquiry in the fifties despite the fact
that these terms were not part of the vocabulary of the day; Chomsky reads these notions
back into earlier work in order to frame the entire project as a unified whole. (Recall that
Oenbring / 338
appeals to psychology [and thus biology] played no role in the claims of generative
grammar until the sixties.)
What’s more, in spite of his dualist tendencies (and even rhetorical maneuvers)
throughout most of his career, Chomsky currently uses his current monist / materialist
rhetorical framework to renew the revolutionary impetus of generative work. Chomsky
continues in the same passage in “Approaching,” arguing that:
In such cases, the issues can be recast as metaphysical rather than
epistemological: Is that how the world works? The issues can then be subjected to
comparative analysis and related to principles of biology more generally, and
perhaps even more fundamental principles about the natural world; clearly a step
forward, if feasible. Such options become open, in principle at least, if the inquiry
is taken to be the study of a real object, a biological organ, comparable to the
visual or immune systems. (1)
As this quote suggests, Chomsky collapses language into biology and biology into
physical systems, reading one of the primary claims of the MP as an essential feature of
the entire program of generative grammar.
As this example intimates, at each point in the history of generative grammar
Chomsky has attempted to claim continuity for his project; he has attempted at each point
in the history of generative grammar to frame the whole project as a coherent, logical
whole. The most important element of Chomsky’s rhetorical framing of the project of
generative grammar has been how he has told the history of generative grammar,
emphasizing the revolutionary nature of several of his different programs for generative
Oenbring / 339
grammar. As I have noted, Chomsky has often done this by setting up the postBloomfieldians, particularly Zellig Harris, as straw men against which to define his own
project.
Similarly, in the interest of presenting his project as coherent, Chomsky has been
very careful about how he has managed his changes of position and his appropriation of
others’ ideas. As I have demonstrated, Chomsky has consistently borrowed ideas from
others without properly acknowledging his sources (recall, for example, how semantic
roles were incorporated into the model under EST and GB/P and P); he and his followers
present their ideas as totally sui generis. Likewise, Chomsky has been careful not to
admit that he is changing his mind.
As these latter points suggest, as a rhetor Chomsky has not only been willing to
engage in daring and bold claims (e.g., alluring dichotomies and grand ruptures), but has
also been quite rhetorically disciplined when he needs to be. As I have suggested,
Chomsky has been careful to stick to talking points; he has, for certain periods of time
stuck to clear sets of claims and points of identity / god-terms, in effect offering them up
for followers to use as well. Furthermore, Chomsky has paid attention to the target
audience of his publications: for general audiences he has made appeals to the authority
of tradition, often invoking ‘classic’ figures in science and philosophy; for technical
audiences he has carefully managed his captivating terminology, all while promoting
technical apparatus serving to isolate the community of generative grammarians from
non-specialists. Even expository techniques as small as articulating his most important
points within the first few pages of his texts have apparently not escaped his attention; he
Oenbring / 340
almost always introduces his most important and alluring notions within the first ten
pages. Indeed, Chomsky’s discipline as a rhetor has helped him dominate the discipline
of linguistics.
While having a well-funded graduate program at a prestigious university doesn’t
hurt if one has ambitions to guide or even dominate a particular academic field, the
evidence suggests that much of Chomsky’s success can be attributed to his success as a
rhetor. Of course, as a rhetorician, I see rhetoric as not necessarily a bad thing. Rather,
rhetoric is unavoidable. Indeed, in the case of the analysis of Chomsky I have provided
in this study, I only mean rhetoric in a partially critical manner; I see Chomsky as a
brilliant rhetor — in addition to being a brilliant linguist.
Although it is late in the game to admit it, in this study I do not mean disparage
those who believe that it is possible for inquiry to be beyond the realm of rhetoric: for
inquiry to be truly scientific. The innumerable studies over the past half century that have
been inspired by Chomsky work and person have each provided nuggets of insight,
insight that is leading inquiry somewhere. Indeed, as Seuren concedes in Chomsky’s
Minimalism, a book that must, as a whole, be recognized as a skewering of Chomsky’s
most recent program:
True, most science is subject to social value systems and subjective elements of
evaluation and appreciation — even, one has to admit, to prejudices. It also has to
fit into current sociological conditions, or else it will fail to attract good intellects.
Yet it goes too far to deny science all lasting objective value and give rhetoric free
play. No matter what limiting factors play a role in the development of science,
Oenbring / 341
there always is a core of what we want to consider good work of lasting value
which will always retain validity, though it may be supplemented with work
motivated by other perspectives or even supplanted by theories place in a wider
and more general context. (10)
While Seuren does not approach the questions of Chomsky’s methods and scientific
inquiry from the perspective of rhetoric, I agree with him wholeheartedly. Despite
limiting factors, there always is a core to scientific inquiry that retains value. To put this
another way, we can say that although it does not occur in a predetermined, teleological
manner, science eventually builds knowledge. To recognize that inquiry is always already
laden with rhetoric is not, furthermore, to give rhetoric free play. Rather, awareness of
how language practices constrain and produce our thinking as scholars should be part and
parcel of good scholarship.
In this study I hope to have provided at least some fresh insight into the project of
a scholar about whom innumerable words have already been written, and likely many
more words will be written, a scholar whose total citation count places him among the
ranks of Shakespeare, Marx, and Freud (a number that this study has only increased).
Good or bad, Chomsky’s influence on the field of linguistics and nearby fields like
philosophy and psychology has been profound. As a rhetor, Chomsky has always been
dynamic, daring, and innovative; he has always been, for lack of a better word,
revolutionary. While his influence on the field may have waned in the past few years,
one can say for certain that any future publications in the area of linguistic theory he will
produce will likely be scoured for insight by a substantial portion of the field of
Oenbring / 342
linguistics. Whether Chomsky has another revolution left in him — or whether the
community of linguists would be able to tolerate another revolution — is unclear.
Nevertheless, despite losing a number of his boldest supporters in recent years, Chomsky
continues to innovate and, in many ways, remains thoroughly realist (read: scientific) in
his core beliefs and rhetoric; Chomsky remains, characteristically, as bold as ever.
Oenbring / 343
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